


Solstice, Inc.

by Kangofu_CB, vextant



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Amnesia, F/F, Fashion & Couture, Historical References, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Minor Injuries, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant/pseuds/vextant
Summary: Natasha wakes up in a room with no memory. In the next few days, she will join an agency determined to save the world; she will travel through time, to the past, to the future; and she will fall in love.Maybe even in that order.





	1. We Are Building a Religion

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[ART] Solstice, Inc](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406038) by [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB). 



> This is a collaboration for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2019, between myself and the wonderful [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB). Her beautiful art is featured in chapter 6!
> 
> I'd also like to thank [layersofsilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/layersofsilence/pseuds/layersofsilence) for her superb cheerleadering, and especially [starksnack](https://starksnack.tumblr.com) for stepping in at the last minute to beta and being so patient with me.
> 
> There's also a playlist I spent a bit of time building and tweaking on this. Each chapter has a song (or two) dedicated to it. The link to the full playlist will be at the end of the fic (on Spotify, so if this doesn't work for you, let me know!). 
> 
> [ [HERE]() is the mood song for Chapter 1: We Are Building a Religion. ]

She comes to. 

“It’s alright,” a voice says. She doesn’t recognize it. Her eyelids are heavy, but she opens them anyway. A strong scent stings her nose — citrus, hibiscus, and bleach underneath those. Did she pass out? Bleach fumes can do that, that much she knows, although she doesn’t quite remember where she learned it. 

Around her, the room is dark. In front of her is a small screen but it takes effort to focus on it. There’s no sound, even though the characters’ mouths are moving, making the silence of the room pulse in her ears. 

On the screen is a teenager. He gets in a silver car and drives up the street while a man climbing a building yells at him. The kid must be stealing it.

Lightning flashes. The man and the kid are in a thunderstorm. It’s a town square, small and old-fashioned. The building is a clock tower. 

So she recognizes that, at least. _Back to the Future_. 

“Natasha,” the voice continues. She supposes that must be her, seeing as she’s alone with the television. “Agent Romanoff, can you hear me?”

She nods, but then she doesn’t know if the voice can see her. Clearly it already has, if it knew she was awake — and either way, she doesn’t know if she could speak if she was pressed to. Her throat feels rough, hot, like she’s swallowed boiling acid. It’s churning in her stomach and drying out her mouth. Her head is stuffed with cotton; her eyes are glued to the screen. 

“Agent Romanoff, how do you feel?” You’ve had quite a long rest.”

She swallows, and it hurts. The voice doesn’t wait very long for a response, because she hears, “Alright, open the doors, get her out,” but it’s distant and muffled, like the voice forgot to take its finger off the button. 

To her right, the wall cracks open and it’s a torrent of clean, emotionless light, bright like she’s never seen. Her eyes hurt to the point of watering before she has to look away. 

“Go on, get her up,” says another voice, and this one is a lot closer, unfiltered, directional — coming from inside the light. 

Footsteps, hands on her — she tries to throw them off, to escape their grip, but there’s cotton in her head and cement in her bones — her muscles are lax, unresponsive, _weak_ , and she can feel every last fiber of them. She’s lifted to her feet. One agent is on either side of her. They’re not particularly gentle, but neither are they outright cruel. She thinks that, if pressed, she could easily defeat both of them in combat. 

It’s hard to tell just why that thought occurs to her. There’s no more time to dwell on that though, since her eyes are starting to adjust to the light as she’s hauled — helped? — through the hole in the wall. 

This new room is a stark contrast to the one she just left, mostly in that it’s not a room at all, but a large, bright hallway. She tries to turn her head to look, but the movement strains her eyes. There’s not much else to see besides the other doors — not doors, but seams in the walls, great sliding doors like the one that opened for her. For that woman’s voice. 

As she’s led away, down the great white sterile hallway, she catches sight of a small screen mounted next to one of the doors. An identification number, vitals, heart rate, breathing, blood pressure. So she’s in some kind of hospital. 

Natasha is taken through a set of double doors, and then another, and then two right turns and an elevator. 

“Where?” She manages to croak. Neither of the two agents answer. 

Eventually, they take her to a meeting room. She’s sat at the far side, her back to the wall, a large conference table standing between her and the exit — and somewhere in her mind, she knows it’s deliberate, that someone has to arrive, something has to happen, before she’s permitted to leave. As soon as the temptation to escape is seeded in her mind, it’s just as easily cut down by the reality of the alternative — namely, that there is none. She has nowhere else to go. 

The agents leave the room. One of them glances over his shoulder as the door closes behind him — Natasha doesn’t look at him directly since she doesn’t want any kind of implication taken form just a look, but it’s difficult to read any sort of expression out of the corner of her eye. 

Natasha is left alone is the room. This is also deliberate, she knows, a test of some kind. Setting her hands flat on the table, she’s surprised when they shake, and it frustrates her immediately. When she tries to stop it, they only tremble that much worse. 

The door opens. There’s no knock, no prelude as a smartly dressed woman steps through, shadowed by two other suits and another uniformed agent. 

“Agent Romanoff,” says the woman as she takes a seat with a nod. Her voice forces Natasha’s shoulders back and her spine straight — and she knows then that it’s the first voice she heard after waking, the voice that got her out of the room with the television. This woman is in charge. “How are you feeling?”

Her throat closes up right as she tries to answer, so the words don’t come, but her hands shake less than before. She nods her head to indicate she is in an acceptable state.

Something is stopping her from looking the woman directly in the eye. The other suits and the agent take their seats at the table. 

Natasha is fenced in. Trapped, surrounded, supported. 

No one is saying anything, but she can feel the expectant weight of the woman’s gaze. _She_ needs to be the one to speak up, not the woman in a sharp blue suit with blood red lips, before the silence stretches on forever. 

“I am —” Natasha’s own voice startles her, the depth, the sound, the feeling of it. “I’m fine.”

The woman nods, sated. On the table in front of her is an unmarked, unopened manila folder. Natasha chooses to focus on that rather than the woman’s face. 

“Good to hear. No doubt you’re curious what this is all about.”

It’s more than curiosity — she needs the information more than she needs water for her dry, cracked throat. A bone-deep need for knowing wakes up inside of her, and it is ravenous. 

“Yes,” she says softly. A test of her own.

The woman presses her lips together in a tight, professional smile. “Do you remember me, Agent?”

Truthfully, Natasha doesn’t remember much before she woke up in that room — even now, trying to catch a hold of what she _does_ remember, is like holding onto ice. The tighter she squeezes, the more it hurts, the more the memories melt away just at the effort. She is left with wet and cold and nothing of value. She does not know this woman — but more importantly, she does not know what the truth is worth to her. 

In her smile, Natasha knows that the woman knows this already. “My name is Margaret Carter. What is the last thing you remember?”

So Margaret Carter can see the truth, can read it on Natasha’s face, something. Deception offers no advantage here. “I remember that room. _Back to the Future_.”

One of the suits whispers something into Carter’s ear. Natasha tries to read his lips, but he is barely moving them — Carter’s face is unreadable too, but eventually she nods. To Natasha, she smiles. “Well then, allow me to catch you up. You’ve completed the first part of the initiation process for your new role in this company.”

The new smile of Carter’s is warm, reaches her eyes. Genuine, then — or at least convincingly so. The truth is what Margaret Carter makes it, and the observation sits heavily in Natasha’s chest.

This isn’t the kind of test she’d thought it was. Her assumption had been some kind of proof of loyalty, a creed to recite or an oath to swear, but now all these thoughts seems juvenile. It is a demonstration, a contest of wills, two truths pitted against one another. Natasha’s truth is that she doesn’t know what to say — but she knows her loss for words, her lack of an explanation, is exactly what Carter wants. 

“Your hiring is complete, and now so is your training.” Carter continues, “Apologies for waking you from your nap so suddenly, but the time has come to see you in the field.”

Natasha feels sick. She has no memory of training, of falling asleep in front of the television — only waking up. Even now, so soon afterwards and with no other memories to distract her, she can’t recall whether she was sitting or lying down. It’s a small thing, but it weighs on her.

The truth is what Margaret Carter makes it. This must be the case, because Natasha has no evidence to the contrary other than a feeling.

The revelations must be obvious, written on her face again, because Carter folds her hands over the manila folder and chuckles, light and airy. “I must be getting ahead of myself. You, Natasha Romanoff, are a new field agent for us — Solstice, Incorporated.”

One of the suits nods, a small, proud smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Now the careful choreography makes sense: If Natasha had escaped, she wouldn’t have been given this explanation, this guidance. It’s not a test, or a demonstration. It’s a lesson. 

“What kind of company?” She’s surprised to hear her own voice again, but Carter looks pleased. Completely unprompted, the uniformed agent sets a glass of crystal clear water by Natasha’s right hand. It’s very tempting, so she takes a grateful sip.

“Asset protection,” Carter says simply.

Another facet of the security theater, another explanation for the hospital-like vital readouts: recovering field agents. Her mind supplies the word _paramilitary_. Whatever they protect must be dangerous, or perhaps it’s their enemies that are. 

Deep down, Natasha finds a piece of truth — that she can be dangerous too. 

“What do you need me to do?”

Immediately, the manila folder is slid across the table to her. Inside it is a dossier, one sheet of paper that is almost entirely blacked out. 

“Unfortunately, there’s not much information we can give you prior to mission start,” Carter says, a little smug. “We prefer our new agents to be briefed on the job, rather than relying on written documentation.”

It strikes Natasha as an odd policy, but a smart one. Distrust can run both ways. 

“Once you’re declared fit, you’ll be deployed with your colleagues and given the pertinent information, I can assure you.”

Again, Carter says much without saying much at all. The exact nature of the work is intentionally obscured, which means it is either highly confidential of highly compartmentalized. Still, Natasha has faith in her own competence. She doesn’t need details to do a job well. 

“Dr. Faustus has confirmed his availability for a priority physical.” One of the suits is looking at a device in his hand. It’s small, fitting into his palms like a sandwich as he reads whatever message is coming in. Natasha can see the light brushing across his face. 

“Very well. James?” Carter calls out, looking over her shoulder to the door behind her. A bolt unlocks from the other side and a uniformed man steps through. He’s one of the agents who accompanied Natasha here — the one who gave her a second glance as he left. 

The suit on Carter’s right stands, walks around the table, and takes the dossier with its unlabeled manila folder out from under Natasha’s nose. He’s bald, shorter, with large glasses. “James here is going to show you back to medical.”

From the doorway, James nods. He’s got his arms crossed and hasn’t come any further into the room. 

Everyone seems to be waiting for something. 

“You’re dismissed, Agent Romanoff.”

Oh. 

Natasha stands with a nod. Making her way around the table while everyone else besides her escort remains seated is oddly freeing — watching them all watch her inflates her sense of self-importance rather quickly. 

Then, on her way out the door, James sets his hand on her shoulder and squeezes it hard. What happens next is so fast it could have been choreographed — Natasha’s body is moving automatically. 

She strikes him in the stomach with her elbow. When he doubles over she sidesteps, and adds to his momentum by kicking him face-first into the doorframe. 

He’s going to strike back — it comes in the form of a low kick, swept backwards to catch her off-guard. It doesn’t. 

James stands with his back against the wall, and Natasha clocks the knife in his hand almost too late, but her foot is already on his throat. His lip is bleeding, so she presses more of her weight on him, leaning in. The small, frustrated cough he lets out is more satisfying than it probably should be. 

“When, you’re finished assaulting each other.” Carter is standing now, along with both suits. The other agent has a gun drawn and pointed right at Natasha — it’s a strange-looking weapon, with two metal contact points where the barrel should be. “Jasper, cancel that physical. She’ll be just fine.”

**> T I M E I S O N O U R S I D E <**

As fate would have it, James is one of her fellow agents on her first mission. He doesn’t speak much — Natasha hasn’t heard him say anything at all so far as she’s known him — but she thinks she’d rather be partnered with someone as silent as him rather than a chatterbox.

They spend an hour “in prep”. It seems almost like a backstage to a theater, gearing them both up to go out and perform — there are no uniforms like James and the other agent wore before, but the support staff here is very deliberate in choosing how they look. Natasha is dressed in an a-line skirt the goes down to just below her knees and a matching blazer. It’s pretty constricting around the waist really, an emphasis on form over function. The mission must be more espionage rather than combat-focused. Not a problem. She’s also given a broach, large and gold and gaudy, but when she asks about its capabilities the support agent says he doesn’t know. 

Without a word, James leads her out of prep and through the maze of Solstice’s operations department. They’ve put him in a slimline suit with a high, white collar clasped close around his neck. He’s attractive, she supposes, but it’s really only his face — only physical, really, in general, because she hasn’t seen much evidence of a personality to go with it. Other than pushing people around and pulling knives out of … somewhere. It doesn’t matter, Natasha can be professional. 

James puts his left hand on a scanner and a large door opens for them, completely silent. The room behind it is small, well-lit, and clear of furniture — except for a glowing column in the very center. It’s green, the kind of sick green like when plants are dying, and it hurts to look directly at. 

Her mission partner doesn’t seem too bothered by it though — he skirts right around to stand on the other side. Ignoring the sense of warning in the back of her mind, Natasha follows. She edges around the glowing pillar too, trying not to think too hard about its possible purpose, and reaches the other side just in time to watch James open a small case built into the wall. He pulls from it two small black wristbands with empty clock faces. 

“I am James, by the way.” As he holds one of the watches out to her, she’s taken off guard. His voice is both rougher and softer than she expected. He has an accent, subtle but there, different than Margaret Carter’s sharp vowels or even her own. It makes her think of snow. 

“Natasha.” She nods as she clasps the watch on. Then, and only then, the introduction strikes her as odd — James’ lip is still cut from losing their skirmish yesterday. 

“Natasha,” he repeats to himself, fiddling with his own watch. He holds up his wrist so she can read the face. “Does your number match mine?”

James must be left-handed — he wears his watch on his right. There are numbers flipping up and down, white digits printed half-on-half on little black cards like a train station departure board. Eventually, it settles into four long strings, like coordinates but all wrong. Her numbers do, however, match James’. “Yeah.”

“Then it is time to go.” He approaches the column in the center of the room. 

Not knowing what to expect, she stands beside him shoulder-to-shoulder. His hand is hovering over a large button — it looks important, even normally protected by a glass case that he’s flipped open. 

“Wait,” she says, and is surprised when he does. He blinks at her expectantly, but she didn’t think this far. In a fit of suddenly forgetting every word she knows, all Natasha can come up with it, “No gear?”

James chuckles, low and soft, but she doesn’t know what’s so funny. “No, Natasha. No gear. Close your eyes.”

She doesn’t. She doesn’t listen, doesn’t close her eyes because he’s already hit the button and there’s a ringing in her ears, building and building until it’s not just her but the room itself — the green light is glowing bright, brighter, burning hot and swallowing the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It swallows the both of them too— 


	2. Keep the Cadillac Running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha goes on her first mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/track/6ZDk3PGFkRKGgk6aSkw2T9?si=JRnzyyagRLuMZ7sAX0KUlQ) is the mood song for Chapter 2: Keep the Cadillac Running. ]

Something gently taps her on the shoulder. Natasha opens her eyes as a feeling of leftover inertia pulls at her, like the world had been spinning rapidly but suddenly stopped. James is watching her with caution, not concern, but he keeps what he’s thinking to himself. Instead, he nods in the direction behind him — he wants her to follow. Fine. 

With her first step the world begins to spin again, and it’s hard to keep her balance. She sees James hesitate before reaching for her, but she’s already gripping something wide and about waist-high to support herself. 

It’s a chair back. Cushioned, leather, mustard-yellow. Natasha moves her hand away like it’s going to get infected — there was no furniture in the room before. The whole space is darker now, too. Not as dark as the room with the television, but muted, with dim florescent lights and covered window. The chair belongs to a set, two more of its like and similar loveseat clustered around a low coffee table. She’s too far away to read the covers of the magazines. 

“Good, you’re here.” A woman says from behind them both. James doesn’t startle like Natasha does, even though she’s careful not to give it away. “It’s normal to feel sick or disoriented; that’ll wear off in a few minutes.”

The woman is tall, slender, not sharp-looking like Margaret Carter but with all the same natural authority. She has freckles, and light hair pulled back in a tight bun. 

“Who is this?” Natasha says to James. Predictably, he says nothing. 

“Oh, he won’t say much until we’re finished. His accent could give some people around here the wrong impression.” James nods his agreement. She extends a hand to Natasha. “I’m Virginia, your CO. I’m here to brief you, and extract you upon completion.”

It all sounds rehearsed, like Virginia’s a codename for a no-name agent just reading her lines. Still, Natasha was on the (apparently mistaken) impression that James was her CO, something she must’ve just assumed form all the showing her around. She doesn’t know what it is about Virginia exactly that’s throwing her off so much. 

“Please, let’s sit while you two get your bearings from the jump.”

James is quick to follow that order, claiming the furthest chair, the one against the wall. Smart — he has sight lines down the hallway and out the window, but it does make the remaining choices all seem inadequate. Natasha relegates herself to the end of the loveseat closest to him so that she is in front of a wall and not a window. She refuses to be that stupid, although part of her thinks that James would try to give her as much warning as he could if a little red dot appeared above her ear.

Virginia sets down her clipboard, smooths down the back of her cap-sleeved black dress, and sits right beside Natasha, in the exact space Natasha decided against for viewpoint reasons. The threat of enemy observance — or worse, enemy overwatch — doesn’t seem to cross her mind. 

Natasha has to force herself to refocus, to think more about this mission itself — the mission at head, the mission she doesn’t know anything about, the mission she got poked and prodded and costumed for, for which she got no gear, no briefing, no equipment, not even a heads-up until landing here, in an unknown facility, with an unfamiliar woman claiming to be her commanding officer. That mission. 

Now doesn’t seem the time to analyze Solstice’s standard operating procedure, but that need for information deep inside her growls at being left in the dark. 

“Today is very straightforward,” Virginia says lowly, like a floor manager opening a morning meeting at a big box store. Down the hallway, a door opens, and a man in a slimline suit like James’ hurries down the hallway without even sparing the three of them a glance. So, Natasha thinks to herself, this place must not be so worried about security, either because of an extensive internal system or the complete lack of one. “Later this year, Director Helms is going to order the destruction of certain documents — we need to retrieve a select few before this order goes into effect, and for the rest, exacerbate the process.”

It’s sabotage, Natasha knows, but says nothing. At the same time, she considers that the “assets” Solstice is charged with protecting are not physical, but information. That changes the game entirely. It has yet to be verified, of course, but even with the basic details Virginia has given, it feels a safe assumption. 

Leaning forward in his chair, James gestures with his first two fingers — “Come here”, no, in this case, “Hand it over”. 

“Your list.” Virginia obliges, setting her clipboard down on top of the glossy magazine covers. “Retrieve these, destroy the rest. No setting off any alarms if you can help it.”

James picks up the clipboard with a nod and begins pouring it over. Natasha watches him, at first expecting the file to be passed along, then annoyed when he takes the paper, rips it in three pieces, and sets the clipboard back down. The next page is a blueprint with lines fuzzy like it was copied on an old-fashioned Xerox machine. The text is printed in a typewriter-style serif font, with careful annotations in blue pen that must be Virginia’s. 

Virginia leans in to Natasha’s field of vision in order to get her attention. “Since this is your first day, command is mostly expecting James to be your shadow, so your task is simple, but important. He will know what to retrieve, this blueprint is for you to memorize and destroy. Compartmentalization, you understand. It can take some time to acclimate to … how things are done.”

With a soft scoff, Natasha sets her hands in her lap. She doesn’t see what’s so difficult to pick up — especially on a mission only concerned with the extraction and destruction of information. James picks a large, heavy glass ashtray up from the center of the coffee table and sets it down in front of him, folding up his paper shreds to sit in the very middle without hanging over the edge. Out of his jacket pocket he pulls a deck of cards and opens it — no, it’s a cigarette case, but there’s nothing inside except a lighter. The paper catches easily and crumples into black ash under the power of the small flame. 

There’s no doubt that fire is inherently attractive, large or small. The three of them watch it die down in complete silence, and when James waves the smoke away, the movement brings Natasha back to present, back to focus. Burning documents in a semi-public setting is not what she’d consider smart. However it must be standard practice or at least relatively common since Virginia has said nothing and made no attempt to stop it — unless she also realizes, like Natasha does, that the use of an ashtray covers their tracks. Curious eyes are less likely to sift through these ashes then those in a trashcan or the bottom of a mug. With luck, the next person to come along and sit in these hideous chairs will smoke another cigarette and further bury the evidence. 

Intending to study the available blueprint, she reaches to pick up the clipboard on the table, but the magazines underneath give her pause. They’re all vintage, early 1973 editions within a month or so of each other. This isn’t in itself strange, but it’s that they’re all on display in this sort of waiting room — it would certainly take time to amass this coherent of a collection, so to make them freely available in a public or semi-public space seems odd. Neither are any of them faded, like she’d expect glossed paper of this age to be. A reprint, then. They fit in well with the mustard-yellow seating set and the heavy patterned glass ashtray. 

The map in front of her is simple. They are sitting in the t-junction of a much larger building — Virginia has helpfully added a dotted line to the records in question, which, judging by the adjacent rooms, is an office with some kind of access control. There’s no code written. 

She looks up to Virginia with the question only half-formed, and it dies on her tongue — this could be another test. Carter wants to see her capabilities without being hand-fed key information.

If she didn’t know better, she would say that Virginia almost looks worried at the prospect of her failure. Natasha knows she’s projecting when that thought crosses her mind. 

Once more, she traces the lines of the map with her eyes, and when she’s confident in the geography she tears the paper in quarters and sets it in the ashtray for James to light.

“How much time do we have?” She says. A thinly disguised way of asking about the extraction plan, and she knows that Virginia picks up on it right away. 

“The building is officially closed already, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty. With luck it shouldn’t take you long.” Her CO smiles, a little, flighty thing that disappears almost instantly. “My desk is two floors down, first left turn, on the right. Find me when you’ve finished.”

Natasha nods, committing the additional directions to memory. It comforts her in a way, knowing that Virginia’s been in cover long enough to establish herself a desk. That explains her ease in acquiring blueprints, and her sense of calm about possibly being seen from the window. 

“See you on the other side.” James says quietly. 

It makes Virginia smile. She stands and nods to both of them, gathering her now-empty clipboard and setting the ashtray back in its original place. “As always. Agents.”

Turning on her heel, Virginia rounds the corner and is almost immediately gone from sight. Natasha hears a door swing open, then the soft echo of kitten heels descending a metal staircase. 

She takes a slow, deep breath — careful to keep it from seeming like nerves or apprehension, which it isn’t. 

James is watching her. That must make it her turn to take the lead — fine. She’s the one with the map now, let him follow her around like a lost dog for a change. It gives her a sense of satisfaction, but a strange one, like she’s been manipulated into feeling this way for someone else’s purposes. 

“This way,” she stands. He rises with her, brushing down the front of his suit. 

The blueprint is clear in her head, like someone had stamped it there. She supposes that’s one of the things that makes her so attractive to Solstice, that and her habit to not ask too many questions out loud. In total, they walk a total of about ten minutes — leisurely, so as not to attract attention — down the hallway, up one set of stairs and down a second hallway. They pass five people overall, all of whom are men, three of whom give James some kind of professional nod as they cross paths. Natasha might as well be invisible. While for their purposes this is probably beneficial, the ease with which she disappears in their eyes makes her shoulders tense. 

Approaching the room they need is an unexpectedly easy process. It has a nondescript wooden door, some kind of light walnut trimmed in painted metal, identical to the six others in this stretch of drab tan-painted hallway. Natasha is confident it’s the one they need. 

Without entirely thinking it through, she knocks. She can feel James tense behind her, clearly uncomfortable with not knowing what’s going to happen next. Too bad. Things change in the field all the time — she doesn’t remember much, but she remembers that, and if he can’t be adaptable then that’s his problem. 

There’s no answer, so she knocks again. She won’t give whoever’s in there — if anyone at all — a third chance to prepare. The lock seems basic, a key and a four-digit code input with large-beveled buttons seemingly stolen off of an old computer. If that’s any indication, the wiring underneath should be just as simple and antiquated. 

“Yeah, come in.” A soft buzzer sounds from inside along with the man’s voice, and the door unlocks.

Natasha puts on her best, most flattering smile as she opens it. “Sir?”

“Better be quick, I’m just heading out.” The man inside is older, clean-shaven, grey hair combed and gelled back. He’s got a brown felt fedora perched on the back of his head, a long matching coat folded over his arm, and is standing over his desk — a desk strangely free of a computer, but instead bears stacks and stacks of loose-leaf and binder-bound paper. From the setup, Natasha determines that he’s telling the truth. 

“We’re just in time, then — the Director wanted to see you before you leave.”

“The Director?”

She doesn’t let it catch her off-guard. There are plenty of possible reasons for the question — perhaps he’s hard of hearing, or there’s disbelief that the Director would ask for him personally, or he could be distracted by the process of packing up. 

“Yes. Director Helms?” Confident, she takes another few steps into the room. “He said something about tomorrow.”

He freezes and looks straight at her. “About  _ what _ tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, I’m afraid I didn’t catch much.” Her smile is easy to shift, shier, more demure. She doesn't know how someone competent like Virginia could last long enough in this environment to stay undercover.

“Alright,  _ fine _ .” The guy says, straightening a last few files on his desk before hurrying past her. Before she can turn to watch him go, Natasha hears the dull thud of two people running into each other.

“Oh, my apology, sir, I’m looking for— Ah, Natalie, there you are!” James says —  _ James is talking _ , beaming at her, accent flowing through his words despite Virginia’s very specific warning. It’s heavier than she’s ever heard it before, but she’s more so taken aback by the amount of words he’s strung together at once.

The man grabs James by the arm and hauls him back through the door. To Natasha’s surprise, James lets him.

“Son, I don’t know how the hell you got this far into the building, but if you think you can convince me that you know this innocent American woman with an accent like that—”

“Why, is it convincing?” James blinks, the picture of innocence. Now it’s Natasha’s turn again to wonder what the hell is going on — a not-so-small part of her hates her mission partner for bringing them so unnecessarily close to being compromised. “I’m sorry, I have to practice somehow, they’re sending me into deep cover starting next week.”

The guy doesn’t look so convinced. Natasha, however, has caught on, even if she isn’t happy about it. “What are you doing here, you said you were going to wait for me in the lobby!”

“In my defense—” James is doing a very convincing job of stumbling over his own pronunciation, flashing a cheeky smile for good measure. “—In my  _ defense _ , you were taking a very long time.”

Stepping forward, Natasha sets a hand high up on the older man’s shoulder and stands beside them. “I’m sorry, sir, really, he was supposed to wait—”

“No, that’s alright.” The man drops James’ arm, and Natasha does her best to look relieved. “You better be careful who you practice around, son, there’re a lot of folks quicker on the draw than me around here.”

James nods, standing to his full height and making a bit of a show of brushing himself off. 

“Thank you sir, sorry again about the trouble.”

“And you, young lady. The both of you could get in a lot of trouble if the wrong person hears about this,” he gestures between them, and it’s taking a lot of effort for her not to roll her eyes at the assumption, “No funny business in my office, alright? Director’s expecting me, close the door behind you.”

“Of course.” Natasha nods. Subtly, James edges around the guy to stand on her side of the room as the guy leaves.

She’s fuming and he can probably tell, but Natasha still waits until the footsteps fade, closes the door, counts to five, and then pins James with a withering look. “What the hell was that?”

In lieu of an explanation, he holds up a keyring and gestures towards the wall of file cabinets behind the desk. “Were you planning on taking the time to pick them all?”

“I got us here, I got rid of him, now it’s  _ your _ part of this.”

“Exactly.” James tosses the keyring towards her and promptly starts making a mess of the guy’s desk. Natasha catches them but doesn’t say anything as she crosses the room to the file cabinets. When he doesn’t get whatever response he was looking for, James looks up. “What?”

She considers him for only a second. “Just didn’t expect you to be capable of making a joke. Or messing with people.”

“Glad I could pull back the curtain on that one for you,” he answers in a soft, breathy chuckle.

At this point, she’s not sure what she should be doing. It’s James that knows what they’re looking for, not her, and now that she knows he’s secretly an asshole, she’s not about to let him give her anything remotely resembling an order. 

“You’re not worried about cameras?” As soon as she says it, she feels panic that it hadn’t even occurred to her until just now. Someone could’ve recorded their every move so far and could now be watching them break into this man’s office with stolen keys. 

James laughs. “No.”

He’s still sorting through the files on the desk. Watching him, it looks like he’s picked a folder to “keep” and is combing through all the other documents to see if there’s anything on his list. 

“What are we looking for?” She doesn’t expect him to answer — mostly she asks it as a way of reorienting herself with a man she thought she had a read on. 

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I know the report numbers. We’re not supposed to read them.”

That makes sense. Virginia's voice rings in her head.  _ Compartmentalization, you understand. _

But on the same hand — they’re printed documents. They’re not encrypted files, transferred to a hard drive and never opened until they get back to command. There are words on the papers right in front of them both. Ordering agents not to read them is, in Natasha’s opinion, a very naive move on Solstice’s part. 

She stands beside James at the desk and watches him flip through. Some of the reports are redacted, but not many. Some have TOP SECRET or CONFIDENTIAL stamped across them — and all of them bear the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Solstice is stealing from the CIA.

It’s difficult, but she can’t let the implications overwhelm her now. This is her job, and she needs to do it well — Carter never said the words “or else”, but they hang there in her voice nonetheless. She stops looking at that part of the page. 

There’s a lot of paperwork here, all coded similarly, as if they were part of the same investigation. Everything she sees is typed up in that serif typewriter font, the same on page after page, the date always in the upper right hand corner, DD-MM-YYYY format. James is flipping through them quickly, but she’s able to catch of couple of them: XX-XX-1963, XX-XX-1966, 1966 again, ‘67, ‘67, ‘67, ‘69, ‘7, ‘71, ‘71, ‘73—

That’s the last paper in the stack. James slides it into his folder and stands, holding his hand out for — oh, the keyring. 

Natasha hands it to him, heart racing all of a sudden. It’s hard to breathe evenly. 

Seeing that specific year once today was odd, but twice was not a coincidence. Once James’ back is turned she opens the file again and flips to that last page to read the full date for herself. 

There is a calendar hanging on the wall, next to the desk. She’s anxious to see it, but at the same time is desperate to forget it’s there. 

Since she’s gotten here — the furniture, straightaway. No, before that, the costuming. The broach. The skirt. The slimline black suit. They styled her hair too, pulled the top half back and curled the ends to tuck in below her chin. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time. 

After that, the — what had she called it, Virginia, if that’s even her real name — it was a  _ jump _ , wasn’t it?  _ It can take some time to acclimate to how things are done.  _ Then the furniture, the patterned glass ashtray, the cigarette case, the magazines. The carpeted hallways, the analogue code lock on the door.  _ His accent could give some people around here the wrong impression. _ The brown fedora with a gray flannel suit. 

No computer on his desk. 

_ You’re not worried about cameras? _

_ No. _

Too many things line up for it not to be true — but it’s impossible. 

Natasha takes a breath, and doesn’t look at the calendar. She tries not to think much at all. 


	3. Livin' Ain't Easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Natasha complete their mission with a little extra flavor; Natasha learns about herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/track/3FJVxoV9V9QhbxZoF7JFJq?si=p9_GVRcRQp-tfxN2NM5gDA) is the mood song for Chapter 3: Livin' Ain't Easy. ]

Once again it's James that breaks her out of her daze. Not directly this time, but through the slamming of a metal drawer. He mutters something to himself that Natasha doesn't quite catch but knows is a curse before he stoops down to the bottom-most drawer in the file cabinet he's scouring. 

She doesn't know what to think, what to do — well, she  _ is _ thinking something that's impossible and absurd and scientifically unachievable as a whole. There's got to be something else she can do to distract herself. 

The calendar is still hanging in the corner of her vision. In the picture for the month she can see a woman in a short dress with full sleeves posing against a long, boxy car. 

Desperate to get away from the implication, the possibility, the  _ im _ possibility, the truth of it that fits right in — Natasha focuses on her mission partner. Assuming James began at the top left like any kind of logical Western progression, he should almost be done. 

"James."

He continues flipping through files, so quick he's almost fanning them, but he tilts his head more towards her — the only indication that he is listening. 

"How do you know there are no cameras? No bugs?"

If he pauses, it's only for a second, and he covers it well. There's no briefing he can use as an excuse — not unless the locations of cameras and audio were part of the list he memorized, and somehow not on the blueprint that Virginia gave to Natasha. That's not logical, and she knows that he knows that she'd see through it right away.

"Look in the corner, to the left of the door," he says finally. She doesn't right away, hesitates for just a moment like he's somehow trying to trick her — but when she does look she spies a small off-white device nestled in the corner of the ceiling. It has a frosted front panel, probably plastic rather than glass, and a small red bulb. James is not looking with her, at her, at all, but still he continues, "Just infrared. All they will see is two thieves with no identifying features."

He keeps rifling through the final cabinet. 

"I'd think the — that a place like this would have some newer upgrades." It's a half-joke. Watching him freeze for just a quarter of a second is as good as verbal confirmation. 

James finishes the first drawer with a soft sigh. The sharp  _ clang _ of it shutting echoes dully around the room. "One would think."

He  _ knows _ . The question she so single-mindedly wants to ask is hanging still in the air, smothering them both. James knows, knows the question, knows the answer already. But the truth, that's a different concern. Even if he  _ were _ to give it to her, it isn't likely to be free — it could come with strings, with consequences. He could lie, perhaps convincingly enough that she'd never know the difference. 

But still, she wants to know. She needs to, to help sate the aching thirst burning inside. Natasha is tired of pushed aside with half-truths and vague orders, misdirections and deliberate misinformation.

"James—"

"I never expected you to ask so many questions." James says with a soft chuckle. "You do talk quite a lot."

It catches her off guard, and the question withers in her throat. He's looking her right in the eye now. The room is bright enough for her to notice that his eyes are grey, something she hadn't known until now — it's disarming, not his gaze necessarily, but the realization that comes with it, the awareness that if the issue was pressed, she doesn't think she knows the color of her own. 

Yesterday she woke up with no memory, not even her own name until she was reminded of it. Yesterday she already knew she was a fighter, trained in hand-to-hand combat by someone or something that she can't remember. Yesterday she — and now  _ today _ , in the present but not her present, not the present she woke up in, was dressed in, was—

She looks at James again. He still has that strange, cautious half-smile like he thinks maybe he'd gone too far, too personal by calling her talkative — and it's then she knows he's given her an out. If she decides she's better off not knowing, then he'll keep his answers to himself. 

Deep, deep down in the depths of her very soul, she knows herself well enough to see that knowing is better than not. The truth may hurt, but it's less tortuous than eternal uncertainty. 

"Where are we?" she asks of him. 

Right away he quips, "Washington, D.C."

Maybe it's because he's an asshole — there's definitely precedent where that's concerned — but there's something in his face that falters. 

Natasha waits. She doesn't want to ask the obvious followup, she knows she doesn't need to. 

It seems James doesn't want to admit it out loud either, since he strides over to pull the calendar off the wall, folds it in half, and hands it to her with the year facing up. 

  1. It's February. 



It doesn't hit her as hard as she thought it would — it could almost be described as relief, a cool drink after a long trek through the sand, but the water tastes like nothing, feels like nothing, and is no relief at all. 

Her throat is dry. She knew it, everything added up, but it just seemed too fantastical, too outlandish for even a company as secretive and bureaucratic as Solstice. The confirmation does nothing but make her feel sick. 

Handing the calendar back to James, she watches him toss it into the open drawer of a yawning file cabinet. Then he collects a thick stack of reports from the floor and puts them on the desk, in the folder he's appropriated as his. 

Natasha suddenly feels stuck without anything in her hands. James seems to have moved on from the weight of the non-conversation rather quickly, judging by the gusto with which he's shuffling the rest of the paper and binders together and tossing them carelessly into open drawers. She joins him in it, even if she's unsure of his reasoning. 

Soon all the cabinets' drawers are open, stacked high with reports facing down — presumably so they can claim plausible deniability as to awareness of the contents. The desk is bare, and James unbuttons his suit jacket to slip his thick folder into what looks like a large zippered pocket on the inside. 

Then he scoops a page off the top of an open drawer, rolls it lengthwise, and tosses his cigarette case to Natasha. 

Everything clicks just then, so fast she almost misses the catch. She raises her eyebrows at him in lieu of the new question. 

"Might make you feel better," he shrugs. The end of his paper roll is held close for her to light. 

Virginia  _ did _ say something about the destruction of the remaining documents. They'd still very much be acting within mission parameters. 

Natasha decides, rather reluctantly, that she likes James' style and flicks the lighter open. 

Something must've changed in the way paper is made since 1973, because by the time James has brought it to the waiting tinder in front of him, his makeshift match is already halfway burned. 

He doesn't seem to mind, touching the pile in each drawer almost gently until the little flame spreads. 

It's appropriate, that this mission begins and ends with fire. Almost poetic, if Natasha was the kind of person who enjoyed that sort of thing. She catches a last glimpse of the woman in the calendar photo through the flames, the ink bubbling in the heat, distorting her face and her dress until she crumples in on herself. Once every drawer is lit, the fire is large enough to heat the room considerably. James unbuttons his suit jacket but doesn't take it off — that's a mark of a good agent, she thinks grudgingly, that even in his brief pyromania he hasn't forgotten about his cargo.

Then one of the cabinets starts to buckle, and they both know it's time to go. James closes the door behind them as they leave.

"No sprinklers or alarms." She says it as an observation, not a question, because there would have been practical, demonstrable evidence of those by now. James nods. He's keeping stride with her, back in his silence since there's no way of knowing who could be listening. 

The building is strangely quiet as they move back through it. Natasha thinks back to the instructions Virginia gave them, laying them over the blueprint in her mind.

Two floors down, first left turn, desk on the right. Sure enough, Virginia is waiting for them with a smile that makes Natasha feel proud of what she and James have done. She keeps the feeling to herself and only responds with a neutral nod. 

"Mission success?" Virginia glances between the two of them. 

James pats his jacket — there's a dull  _ smack _ from the thick manila folder inside. 

Virginia must assume that the second part of the mission, the destruction part, was also completed, because she stands to her full height with practiced posture. "Then let's go."

She sounds relieved to return to Solstice. Natasha wonders how long she's been undercover here, what kinds of things she had to put up with in order to get the access she had, what sorts of things she had to give up, living in the past. It must not be easy when the future is your past, and the past is your present. 

There's a reason Natasha is an operative and not a scientist. The physics alone would give her migraines. 

Behind Virginia's desk, there's a closet door. A door Natasha assumes is a closet, as it bears no placard, is not named and numbered like the rest. There's no real telling what it might be after the day she's had — but still she follows James and Virginia over to it, watches as James grips the handle and pulls it open. 

There's something wrong with James' hand. His fingertips — they're melted, for lack of a better word, and every bit she can see of his palm is the same color, not mottled skin tones like she'd expect. Maybe he burned himself. He was certainly determined to light every single drawer on his own, rather than letting the fire do its work in due time. If that does happen to be the case she is equally parts concerned and impressed with his relationship to injury.

The supply closet is just that. It's a rather tight fit for the three of them to stand in at once. In this close of quarters, Natasha notices that Virginia is just as tall as James, if not taller — she herself is the shortest of the three, and it's difficult for her to tell. 

More pressing is the question of how they're going to return to Solstice. The "jump" here involved synchronized watches — four coordinates for four dimensions, she realizes — and a large, glowing green device that blinded them before sending them sprawling across timespace. Here, there are a couple brooms, a shelf half-filled with brown paper towels, and a mop in standing water that needs to be changed as soon as possible judging by the smell. 

"This is my favorite part." It sounds like an admission on Virginia's part, like something forbidden in some handbook that Natasha was never given. She watches Virginia pull out a pen-sized device. It gleams silver in the light of the single bulb above their heads. "Like we're all taking a picture together."

Virginia pops off the "cap" with her thumb — James catches it and slips it in his pocket without saying a word — and where the pen grip would be is a small, glowing green dot. She holds it up and out like she's trying to light the room better. 

"Alright, everybody, hold still," Virginia says, "You don't have to smile if you don't want to, but it helps."

James' hand is on Natasha's shoulder again. It's a bold move, considering what happened the last time he did that. She almost says something about it, but then he puts his other hand on Virginia's, who in return offers her free hand to Natasha. 

Natasha knows she hesitates too long when Virginia shoots her an apologetic smile. "Just to close the circuit."

She takes her hand. 

"On three, everybody. One, two, three!"

Everything goes green, and then white. 

  
  


**> T I M E I S O N O U R S I D E <**

She's suddenly aware of standing on solid ground again. Someone — Virginia — is squeezing her hand.

Natasha closed her eyes this time, and when she opens them she is grateful she did — there's almost no nausea this time. Virginia lets go to take the cap back from James and close up her little device. Time machine. It's hard to think something that small could do something like that. 

Around them is a square, concrete-walled room with a glowing pillar in the middle. The three of them are awash in green light, none the worse for wear except maybe James' burned hand. 

They're back at Solstice. 

The sigh of relief that Natasha lets out is almost involuntary — it's sort of comforting to know she's back in the correct present, but without a mission to complete she has no frame of reference for what's about to happen next. 

"Turn those in to R&D, will you, James?" Virginia gestures to his middle. James has already taken the suit jacket off and folded it over his arm, but he nods and leaves without saying goodbye. She calls after him, "We'll meet you for the debrief," even though he doesn't give any sign he's heard her except for the door opening at the other end of the room. 

With just her and Virginia here, Natasha feels strangely ungrounded. James was one of the agents who pulled her out of that room, away from  _ Back to the Future _ — which in itself is more perplexing the more she thinks about it, but she chooses to put that aside for the moment — he's been with her, near her, her whole career at Solstice. It hasn't actually been very long in the grand scheme of things, Natasha knows she's just being dramatic in an attempt to justify this unsettled feeling. 

She wonders how much time has passed here since they left. 

"How are you feeling?" Virginia is looking right at her, and in her voice Natasha hears an echo of Margaret Carter. "It takes everybody a few jumps to get their sea legs. James used to get migraines."

It's a small detail, but the abruptness of it means more than Natasha could put into words. A personal piece of history, a memory, and Virginia sharing it with her unprompted without expecting something in return is — is —

All of it is getting too poetic. 

"Should we head to the briefing?" Natasha asks without answering. 

Something in Virginia's face wavers, and for a moment she looks forlorn. Perhaps she pities Natasha's lack of memories or laments the idea of working with some kind of emotionless husk.

"I'm alright," Natasha adds, but she doesn't know why. 

Virginia nods. She leads her out of the jump room and down the long, long hallway to the elevator. They get in without a word, and Virginia presses the button for a floor lower than Natasha has ever been on — when they pass a floor labelled "Costuming", she asks, "We probably don't keep the clothes, do we?"

"No," Virginia shakes her head with the smallest of chuckles, "We don't get to change until after briefing. And I, for one, can't wait to get back into pants."

"You should put in a special request next time."

"I'll put it in my file — 'do not assign in eras without historical precedent for women wearing slacks'."

Natasha allows herself a one-beat laugh that's mostly air. "They can't argue if it's their own documentation."

The elevator doors open.

This hallway looks like all the others she's seen so far — clean, light, bright, nondescript. If she didn't know better she might still think it was a hospital based on the white tile floors and the various framed painting prints alone. She takes a step out, but before she can go any further Virginia grabs hold of her wrist. It's not rough, but it's the look in her eyes that makes Natasha stop more than her grip. 

"Can I talk to you?" Virginia's voice is soft, and she glances apprehensively at the painted door at the end of the hall. "Before we go in?"

Her entire demeanor has changed. She's serious now, deadly so, no smile and no jokes. Natasha can see now why she's an officer. 

Still, it's presented as a choice. Natasha has a feeling that if she said no, she'd let her go and drop the subject — but then Natasha would never know what the subject is, what is so secret and so concerning that it wasn't said in front of James and won't be said in front of mission briefing. 

They're standing very close together. Virginia's nose is maybe half a dozen inches from her own, eyes light, bright blue, faint freckles spread over her cheeks. 

Natasha doesn't think she could manage to say anything. She nods. 

"You need to be very, very careful about what you say in there." 

She feels cold. Dunked in icy water, locked in a storage freezer, saved for a better day. Fighting the vicious chill that runs down her spine, she searches Virginia's eyes for an explanation. 

Her C.O. sighs — probably suspecting that she's been too abrupt, too heavy-handed. "I don't mean to make you nervous. But there are consequences to your report, you need to know that.  _ I  _ need you to understand that."

"What do you mean?" Natasha whispers. 

Virginia doesn't answer right away. She swallows, looks down at her shoes, taking the time to come up with the words. 

Natasha is trying desperately to think of what this could mean. Whether she's being manipulated — which she truly, honestly doesn't believe is the case — or she's being made privy to something she should not ever know.

They've already traveled through time and made it back together. What secret is Virginia keeping that's bigger than that?

"Virginia—"

"Pepper." Virginia says shakily. "It's Pepper, for my friends."

It might be intended as a distraction, a method of delaying the conversation, but it fits her well. Briefly, Natasha wonders when they became friends. That seems like a question for later. 

"Pepper," she says decisively.

"It's — it's hard to say, I'm sorry." Pepper lets out a long breath. She gathers herself and squares up to look Natasha in the eye again. "Solstice doesn't allow weakness. They value loyalty above all else. If they get a sense of anything else, even a hint — they'll wipe that agent and start over."

_ Wipe _ . It's another small word to mean a large thing, like  _ jump _ spanning decades in an instant. At first she doesn't quite know what this one means, but she can guess. 

James introduced himself after they had already met. He has a cut on his lip that she gave to him, but he doesn't remember, because he lost to her. That was weakness.

He was wiped. 

Natasha has no memories before yesterday. But she knows how to fight, knows how to lie, knows how to carry out a directive, how to complete a mission. These are not things she remembers learning.

Like the calendar, she knows the truth without having to look it in the face. 

But there's something else that doesn't add up — Pepper knows. Pepper knows that if Natasha walks into that room and says the wrong thing, that she'll be wiped and the process will begin again. 

"We've done this before." Natasha sees Pepper nod, a confirmation that, now that has it, she knows that she didn't want. "Carter told me I was a new hire to give me a second chance to prove my worth to her."

"Fifth chance," Pepper says softly. "As far as I know. They know your worth, it's your obedience they want."

Five chances. Four wipes. Four fresh, sterilized slates with no memories but the important ones, the ones needed to do the job. 

_ What's the last thing you remember? _

"What do I need to say," Natasha grits out. She means it as a question but it doesn't sound like one. She feels hollowed out, used like a tool only taken out to be sharpened before it's put back in the box. 

"It was a basic mission, extraction and destruction. They'll be listening to see how far you deviated from parameters, how well you worked with James, how soon you caught on to — to the time travel." Pepper's talking quickly, assuredly, like this is the part of the conversation that's most important to her. "I'll be in there with you, obviously, but I can't help you too much or they'll know I've told you."

Natasha quirks an eyebrow, suddenly curious about why her C.O. is so invested in her. "So we've had this conversation before."

Pepper nods. "We've got to get going, do you feel ready?"

No. But knowing what she does now, the stakes are real, clear, immediate, not vague non-answers like she's gotten up until now. Even without her memories of previous missions, she gets the feeling that Pepper is one of the few people at Solstice willing to tell the whole truth, if not the only one. "Yes. Thank you."

After she says it, she feels that it was inappropriate. Pepper smiles regardless — only for a moment or two, before she schools her face back into that cool professionalism and leads Natasha to the painted door at the end of the hall. 

Margaret Carter is seated inside, with Jasper on her right. He has a typewriter of sorts in front of him, a flat, full-sized keyboard with a small screen mounted above it, roughly the size of a deck of cards.

"Agent Romanoff, Agent Potts." Carter smiles like a cat. "Come in, sit down, we've much to discuss."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Historical Notes:  
> > The project Nat and James are poaching from is MKUltra. Many of the documents were destroyed on the order of the C.I.A. director later in 1973. There are some documents that have recently been declassified, but many suspected the public will never know the full extent of the project.  
> > Infrared was the top of the line motion detection of the early 1970s. Security cameras wouldn't be in common use until the rise of magnetic tape, almost a decade later.  
> > In May 1973, the US Fire Administration released a report called America Burning out of concern of the commonality of fires breaking out across the United States. One of their recommendations is in-building fire detection and sprinkler systems.


	4. Obey the Groove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha meets the enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/track/2uWTSzExDgzISj7pL8C9FH?si=Y_AuTE9NR5mWr7S9d0yxFA) is the mood song for Chapter 4: Obey the Groove. ]
> 
> [ This chapter contains a chase and a fight. There are no lasting injuries. If you'd like, please play [this tune](https://open.spotify.com/track/34MipOuphjlVKtJd5twbI5?si=Led_h62VRT2v-L_kga1-oQ) when the following lines appear:
> 
> The enemy fires, the shot whizzing far over their heads, and shouts, "Go! Now!"
> 
> "Going!" yelps the second agent. ]

Natasha is not wiped after the briefing. 

She is, in fact, allowed to leave and rest a full day in quarters that Pepper tells her are hers. They are not where she stayed last night — Carter had her stationed in a temporary sixteen-bunk room with two other agents. Thinking back, Natasha isn't sure if they were new or "new", as none of them really spoke to the others, and all of them lay awake in anticipation of the next day when they were supposed to be sleeping. 

Her new quarters — old quarters? — _her_ quarters consist of three rooms: a bedroom, a bathroom, and a larger room stocked with a couch, a table, two chairs, and a small kitchenette. The whole thing is rather spartan. Natasha supposes that that's very much Solstice's way — basic necessities provided, personal attachments not included. She chuckles softly to herself.

The bed is fairly large for a single, not overly comfortable but that night she locks the door and window, closes the blinds, and sleeps for nine straight hours. 

  
  
**> T I M E I S O N O U R S I D E <**

An alarm goes off. She doesn't remember setting it, but smacking the big top button on the bedside clock a little harder than necessary is more familiar than she'd like to admit. 

There is nothing in her closet but Solstice uniforms, bras, underwear, and socks. Against her better judgement, she puts one on because it's better than nothing at all.

She's got one boot laced up when there's a knock on the front door. That's strange. Not many people know she's here — Pepper is the one who gave her directions yesterday before they parted ways. Natasha is sure living arrangements are well below Senior Agent Carter's paygrade, and Jasper Sitwell probably couldn't be bothered to step out of her shadow for more than five seconds. 

The knock comes again. It's not hurried or insistent, but without knowing who's on the other side Natasha is reluctant to call out to them. She finishes lacing up her other boot before she unlocks and opens the door. 

Pepper is smiling at her, warm but professional. She's wearing pants. And a matching zip-up jacket actually, like something a jogger would wear. The whole ensemble is reddish-purple and looks soft to the touch. 

Natasha raises an eyebrow. Both of them, actually, because it's kind of hideous and she doesn't really need words to convey that. 

"There's another mission." Pepper crosses her arms, looking unimpressed but amused at Natasha's reaction. 

"When?"

"What do you mean? Oh." She chuckles. "2004."

2004\. Thirty-one years after a mysterious fire was set in a C.I.A. office and the arsonists were never found — at least, they haven't been found _yet_ , but Natasha thinks their trail was covered rather well. 

It's no wonder the learning curve is so steep — getting used to the way Solstice does things is an exercise in open-mindedness. Natasha is grateful she's not a physicist, or someone otherwise preoccupied with the science of the time-space continuum. Her rather pedestrian sense of it all is helping her to adjust. 

"Come on, we've got jump in half an hour. if you're lucky, maybe there's another tracksuit laying around in prep."

"Oh, I hope not."

"Have you eaten yet?"

Natasha thinks back through her morning routine — it takes her a moment to determine that no, she hasn't. She shakes her head.

"There's time for a detour. We can grab something on the way."

**> T I M E I S O N O U R S I D E <**

She supposes she should be thankful that she wasn't put in a tracksuit. The one Pepper's wearing would clash with her hair — Pepper's a strawberry blonde, so the dark maroon works for her. Natasha has also been given pants this time around, in a way. They're thick, purple-and-black striped tights under another skirt, one that's shorter and looser than the one she wore to 1973. The top is skin-tight and leaves about an inch of her midriff exposed — which seems the most impractical choice of the whole production until they give her elbow-high fingerless gloves. 

Looking at herself in the mirror, she decides that she vastly preferred the 1970s. The fashion, not the misogyny — although she supposes she has no frame of reference for 2004, so it could be much, much worse. 

She wonders if time-travellers romanticise the past the same way some historians do. If breathing the air, meeting the people, wearing the clothes that everyone else is wearing does anything to their opinion of what came before, their relationship to memory. That might be a facet of the wipe protocol as well, since it seems much easier for Solstice to force their agents to forget than to let them confront big questions. 

Prep gives her bangs without asking or warning, and the rest of her hair is gather into two bunches on the top of her head before being fluffed so that it falls everywhere. It's a bit of comfort to know that Pepper went through all of this too, bangs included. She catches another glimpse of herself in the mirror and sees her eyes are green.

The sturdy combat boots they give her are her favorite part of the ensemble — namely, the only part she likes. 

James meets them on the way to the jump room. He is dressed in … a _lot_ of denim. 

"Oh, wow." Pepper says softly upon seeing him.

He ignores her and instead put his hand on the scanner to open the door. "Are you ready for the future?"

It makes sense that a time-travelling protective agency would jump both backwards and forwards, but still, when Natasha hears it said out loud it takes her mind a moment to catch up.

James must either see or sense her confusion. "We are in 1991."

"Solstice likes to stay just ahead of things like personal computers, cell phones," Pepper adds, leading them inside and opening the watch case. "The internet."

Those things sound familiar, vaguely. Natasha takes her watch and checks her coordinates against Pepper's. "But those are all operational in 2004?"

James chuckles, closing the watch case. "Operational, yes. Cell phones' recording capabilities are negligible, and should not be a problem for us."

"What's the mission?" Natasha is curious. Her gloves keep sliding down to bunch around her wrists, so she pulls them back up.

She's looking at Pepper, and James is too — meaning for all his confidence, he doesn't have a clue either.

"Protocol," Pepper wags a finger at them. "Tell you in a minute."

"Minute and thirteen years, more like." Natasha grins. She's pleased when both her teammates roll their eyes. 

"Got your pen?" James says to Pepper. She nods.

He flicks open the case over the big red button. Beside it, the glowing green pillar still hurts to look at. There's a moment where they all exchange glances — a silent, visual check to ensure that everyone is ready. 

"In three." James' hand is hovering over the button. "Two. One."

Natasha closes her eyes too late — the world goes white again. 

  
  
**> T I M E I S O N O U R S I D E <**

Even after she feels herself again, feels her body standing on solid ground, feels the strange itch of bangs she's not used to brushing against her forehead, everything still looks white. 

Her eyes are open. The white in front of her is a carefully spackled wall. Painted white. 

She lets out a long breath, and surprisingly doesn't feel sick. 

"Are you with us, Nat?" Pepper says from behind her. 

Turning around, she sees that the three of them are all close together in a small hallway. One end of it is bright and somewhat noisy, like an ambient crowd — the other side looks like a set of metal emergency doors. 

James, who has his hands in the pockets of that ridiculous denim jacket, has a sign behind his head that reads STAFF ONLY. 

"I'm good." Natasha nods. Pepper almost looks relieved at the extra confirmation. "Where are we?"

"A shopping mall in the tri-state suburbs. Construction was only finished two weeks ago, it's very new."

"Great, another costume change." James scoffs.

Pepper continues, talking right over him. "This is going to work a little differently than the last mission. it's not a test to see how well you can follow directions." She flashes Natasha a smile. "It's the big leagues now.

"This mall is the first public application of a new kind of power source. It's almost entirely self-generating, separated from the area electric grid. The intelligence says that today, a pair of enemy agents will sabotage it beyond repair and steal its core element, the only one of its kind. Our job is to stop that from happening."

"How much time do we have?" says James lowly. He's got his back to the wall and one eye on the end of the hallway leading into the mall proper. 

"Intelligence wasn't clear." Pepper sighs, clearly frustrated at the gap in her knowledge. "We need to get in there and protect that reactor."

Natasha nods. "What's protocol if we have an encounter?"

Her mission partners share a cryptic look. She thinks it's a fair question — but if Natasha has to guess, it looks like neither of them want the other to answer first.

Finally, Pepper says, "They'll probably engage on sight. Capture is the operating procedure, if at all possible — but if not, eliminate, but only as absolutely necessary."

"Much nicer than they are likely to do to us." James sneers.

"Follow me." Pepper leads them through the doors in what feels like an effort to close the book on any further follow-up conversation.

The staff section of the mall is almost like stepping into a different world, one lined in concrete and painted yellow arrows on the floor. It also feels — wet? More humid, maybe, like air conditioning is a luxury reserved for shoppers and not employees. 

Even without Pepper guiding them, Natasha's fairly sure she could've found her way on her own — the words ARC REACTOR are printed in big white raised letter on every corner, complete with directional arrows. In fact, Natasha's not sure that Pepper isn't just following the signs herself and passing it off as prior knowledge. 

They turn a corner, and the lights shut off. 

In front of them is another pair of metal doors, this time with big glass panes — DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT— 

Natasha doesn't catch the rest because James has already wretched the door open and hurried through, with Pepper in hot pursuit. Several last flickers bound around like lightning until everything fades to inky, fuzzy black. 

"Oh, jeez, darker than I expected." An unknown voice says from deep inside the room. "Wish one of these pockets had a flashlight."

A second person sighs, in a way that almost makes Natasha think it's Pepper, except too far away. 

Two lights come on, one right after the other — the first is on the other side of the room, where the voice came from, and illuminates a large device that dominates the space up to the thirty-foot ceiling. Wires feed into its base like tree roots, and the whole thing looks like a large Tesla coil stuck through a mammoth-sized glass intertube. 

The second light comes from beside her, from her left, from James. It's small, bright, highlighting the hard, cold lines of his expression as he holds it near arm's length away. It's a handgun, Natasha realizes belatedly as James clicks the safety off, with a flashlight mounted atop. 

"Hands up, show yourself!" Demands the woman who's not Pepper. 

Natasha can see her in the far reaches of James' pistol light. She's got a gun as well, blonde, black sports coat over a light, loose shirt and ripped jeans. 

Three of them against one of her almost seems to be unfair odds. But then, who did that second voice belong to?

Pepper is descending a staircase in front of them, down to the level of the arc reactor, with her hands up. Her voice sounds tight as she says, "Agents. You know I can't let you do that."

"Vice-versa, you monsters." The blonde woman — the enemy — clicks her safety off as well. 

There must be some kind of backup generator, because the lights kick back on with a vengeance. 

Natasha slowly follows Pepper down the stamped metal stairs. He own hands aren't all the way up, but they are open, palms out, chest-high. 

James growls from the landing above the, "Permission to—"

" _Hold your fire_ , Agent," Pepper hisses. She's still approaching the enemy, and suddenly Natasha fears she's not armed. Natasha knows nothing about her C.O.'s combat qualifications. She can assume, but this is not a situation to rely on assumption. 

The enemy fires, the shot whizzing far over their heads, and shouts, "Go! Now!"

"Going!" yelps the second agent. He's light-haired too, slim build, big, heavy black pants that weigh him down as he darts out from behind the arc reactor to the doors on the lower level. Almost immediately, he stumbles — from this distance it's hard to tell if it's the wiring or the outfit — but catches himself and makes it out the door with something under his arm — the core! Natasha is right behind him.

James fires a shot at the agent with the gun. It comes much closer than hers did. 

"Barnes, _go!_ " Pepper shouts. 

Natasha doesn't hear another shot as she slams her shoulder into the door, but heavy footsteps pound down the metal stairs behind her. Hopefully James'. 

Her target is sprinting down another maintenance hall — a mirror of the first, but a floor below. He looks over his shoulder once, twice, and flings open a side door to duck through it. It's barely swung closed when she gets there

There's only one flight of stairs. Natasha sees the last of an unnecessarily large black pant leg disappear on the upper level. She takes the steps two at a time — that wouldn't have been possible in the 1973 skirt. The tights are horrible, but they're doing her a favor. 

Up the stairs and out the top door in seconds, she knows she's gaining on him. His speed almost makes up for the fact he's not dressed to run — but still Natasha is faster. 

He's leading her straight out into the mall. The target bursts through another set of doors shoulder first and gets swallowed by the light — there's a rail right in front of him and he skids to a halt. 

Someone buries a knee in Natasha's back, and she stumbles, barely catching herself on her hands so she doesn't slam face-first into the floor. The other agent, the woman, vaults over her and follows her partner out into the public. 

"Alright?" James yells, a step behind her. She holds out a thumbs up before scrambling to her feet to follow him out. 

They're on the second floor of two, a big vaudeville-hall-style promenade wrapping around the edge with glass railing to look down to the level below. At the far ends looks like a large round atrium and she can hear the distant, muffled rush of a water feature. It's a nice mall — but right now Natasha's a little bit preoccupied. 

James has his gun trained on the woman, who seems to be checking over her partner. He's holding the core protectively to his middle.

"Winded already?" The woman says. 

"Tripped over my pants."

"You wanted to look 'alternative'."

"'Least I'm not dressed like a Hanson brother—"

Without warning, James fires two shots into the air. Natasha doesn't know there's a glass skylight until she hears it shatter. Everywhere, people are screaming, there's a mass, mad dash for the exits. It's a cover of chaos — smart on James' part, unless pants guy makes a break for it again.

Natasha takes her chance. She launches herself at the guy with the core, wrapping her legs around his neck, and using her momentum to wrench him to the ground. He gets a faceful of tulle skirt and the core spills out of his hands when he hits the floor.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees James dash for it, but the other agent is already charging him, ducking low to strike him in the stomach with an elbow. 

Pants guy has rolled back to his feet, core forgotten, and tries to punch Natasha in the face. She parries it easily — but it's a ruse, his other fist immediately drives into her ribs from the side. He's smarter than he looks. Trained, too. 

The pain only distracts her for a moment. It's long enough for him to disengage — he's trying to scoop the core back up. Natasha takes a hint from his partner and drops down low to strike him in the side of the knee. At least, where she thinks his knee is in all that pant. 

It works, and he stumbles. She shoves him forward so he lands on his stomach and maybe hit him in the head hard enough to take him out of the equation. 

Natasha gets one knee in his back between his shoulder blades, driving her weight there so he's pinned, when he whines, " _Sharon_ —"

"Just a _second_!" His partner grunts as she strikes James in the side, probably aiming for his kidney. James takes the opportunity to hit her in the face with his pistol — which is just the frame now, Natasha notices. Sharon stumbles back. She retaliates by roundhouse kicking him in the chest.

It's more force than he's expecting — James staggers, only a step or two, but now he's right up against the glass railing and it's just the opening Sharon needs. She dashes the few feet between them and shoves him straight back —

It isn't meant to take the weight of someone like James. Below, more people are screaming, more shards are raining down, and he barely catches the edge of the floor with his hand and an uncharacteristic cry of pain. Natasha wonders if his shoulder's been dislocated by the effort.

Pants guy is scrabbling to get back up from under her. In the turmoil, he's gotten one leg under him and uses that to throw her off so hard the back of her skull rattles against the floor and she sees stars. 

She doesn't know how long it takes for her to get to her knees and then her feet. The guy has both guns in his hands — one complete, one frame, and Sharon has the core. He offers the complete gun to his partner, who shakes her head, so he aims it straight at James. 

Out of _nowhere_ , Pepper charges in and tackles pants guy to the floor again in a mess of red-purple velour and black pants straps. The gun skitters out of his hand, and he tries to reach for it, but Pepper strikes him _hard_ in the head and he goes limp. 

On Natasha's left, James is slowly hoisting himself back up. He gasps and makes it to his knees, cradling his left hand in his right and pulling off his glove — he wasn't wearing gloves before. 

James pulls off his _skin_ , a single-color rubber glove, and tosses it away. Beneath it a metal exoskeleton sparks and gleams, interlocked like a medieval knight's plate gauntlet. 

"Took you long enough." He growls at Pepper, and there's almost no malice behind it. 

"You okay?" She responds, standing and brushing herself off. 

He waves his hand — the right, the human one — dismissively. Although, Natasha isn't sure what to think anymore — they travel through time, why wouldn't her mission partner be a robot?

"I need immediate EVAC. Agent down, possible TBI," someone is saying. It's Sharon, with the core tucked under her elbow, speaking quickly and lowly into her wristwatch. In her other hand is her pistol, trained right on Pepper.

Pants guy is awake again, Natasha thinks. He's groaning, rolling onto his back and then his stomach again, trying to push himself to his knees. 

"Give us the core, and we'll let you go." Pepper says gently. Her hands are up again. 

"Not a chance," snarls Sharon. Into her wrist again, "Jemma, EVAC, _now_."

Her partner has made it to his feet. So has James, striding forward to stand between Natasha and Pepper. 

A green cloud opens behind Sharon, like a window, and beyond it is a large, open room like a hangar bay. The edge is crackling like a thunderstorm. She steps through with one finger held high, and it swallows her.

Another one starts to crackle open behind pants guy. James grabs him by the front of his too-tight shirt and hauls him away from the opening.

"You aren't going anywhere." He says, low and sharp. 

Through this second window, Natasha can see Sharon, turning to realize her partner has yet to jump through. Behind her are several more people, a medical team and what looks like an engineer with some sort of big, black broadcasting-type equipment. 

Pants guy catches his partner's eye and frantically waves his hand. "Shut it— just _shut it_ —"

Distant and muffled, Natasha can hear Sharon echo it — the curly-haired engineer initially refuses, but she turns on him to shout something, and soon the crackling green cloud swallows nothing but itself, its charge left behind. 

The enemy agent sighs. Probably in relief, Natasha thinks — they accomplished their mission, his partner got the arc reactor core. One of a kind, Pepper had said. Damaged beyond repair. 

Natasha shudders to think what Solstice will do when they find out about this failure. This _weakness_. But she doesn't need to imagine — she knows what's waiting for all of them. 

James doesn't take his hand off the agent, even as the guy struggles to break the metal grip. It's easier for him to rip the fabric, and he starts to, before James turns him around and pulls his arms behind him. The agent's own shirt becomes his handcuffs.

"We're going to get everything out of you, you know that?" James says, very, _very_ close to the man's ear. "You're in Solstice now."

The guy spits. "Fat chance, Terminator."

"I'll start." Pepper's voice is cool and even as she pulls her pen transport out of her pocket and flicks off the cap. "This is Clint Barton. He works for S.H.I.E.L.D."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone on twitter who consulted with these very important fashion choices:  
> > Pepper, maroon velour tracksuit. white sneakers included  
> > Natasha, dressed exactly like how Scarlett Johansson is on the cover of The Perfect Score, which came out in 2004  
> > Bucky, in _all_ the denim you can imagine  
> > Clint, in tripp pants. What did his shirt look like? Who cares, the pants are 88% of the ensemble  
> > Sharon, dressed exactly like [this](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/5f/c9/c3/5fc9c316382a2e0c6091f5679eff29e5--androgynous-people-androgynous-fashion.jpg)
> 
> > [The song I wrote the chase/fight to](https://open.spotify.com/track/34MipOuphjlVKtJd5twbI5?si=Hr4BCV90SHyHSqRaSfD2OA) is called Hava Nagila. Originally, it's a Jewish folk song for celebrations (it means "Let Us Rejoice" in Hebrew), but this specific version is a cover by the king of the surf guitar, the father of heavy metal, guitar legend Dick Dale.


	5. Tap that Crown on the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper has another confession to make, but Natasha can't seem to find her anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/track/2a6hyCvJXQB5DjFnzHHJua?si=ctTw9WO1T7aG0WqURqTT6A) is the mood song for Chapter 5: Tap that Crown on the Ground. Warning for loud! ]

The 2004 mission is both a failure and a success. 

The core was still taken, the arc reactor still destroyed. To Natasha's knowledge it will never be repaired. 

Clint Barton, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, is taken to a holding cell and placed under observation until command can figure out what to do with him. As it turns out, no Solstice agent has ever been able to capture a member of the enemy before _and_ bring them back to headquarters. This makes Barton the first case of his kind, and James, being the agent who technically captured him, is suddenly launched into very, very good graces.

For such a heavily bureaucratic organization, a case like this is highly perplexing. Solstice protocol generally has a very binary outlook on mission results — either they are successes, or they are failures. No one can seem to find any precedent for what to do when both happen at the same time. 

Natasha, Pepper, and James are sat through briefing after briefing after briefing with Jasper Sitwell, Margaret Carter, Margaret's Carter's boss who never gave his name, and his boss, a loud, brash young woman they found out later is named Cynthia — but in the same breath, Carter warned them to never call her that. 

They spend hours pouring over the same facts. What damage did S.H.I.E.L.D. do to the reactor, did they encounter any time-local authorities, did anyone record them, what was through the portal the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agent escaped with, how did she summon it? Research and Development division agents come in and ask them for sketches, measurements, scientific details. 

The second day, James steps into the conference room without a left arm. He tells them that he damaged the hydraulics breaking his fall, and that it was taken off for repairs. 

Until anyone can figure out how to properly discipline them — or if discipline is even needed — Natasha and her team are taken off active duty. She discovers she is forbidden to leave Solstice property without proper authorization, and already her future is in such a precarious state that she drops the subject. 

She has access to half a dozen facilities: her quarters, the mess, Sitwell's office, the athletics facility, the library, and the cell where Clint Barton is being held. 

He is by far the most interesting thing happening around her at the moment. For one, he doesn't seem too concerned with being a captive which, whether or not it's an act of bravado is in itself entertaining — and two, he can get a rise out of James in three seconds flat, without fail. It's certainly an accomplishment, and one James keeps falling for. 

One James keeps going back to, strangely enough. In Solstice's eyes he can do no wrong regardless, as he is now the golden child they didn't think they had. Natasha doesn't know if she's ever going to get a chance to work with him again, now that he's likely being moved up to bigger and better things. 

The fourth day since 2004, she joins him on a visit to the cell. Although, 'joins' is not meant to imply they went together, but more in the sense that James was already there when Natasha arrived, glowering at the sandy blond on the other side of the glass. 

"Oh, hey," Barton says when he catches her eye. He waves — for someone is his situation, he is awfully friendly. "You're just in time — there's an interrogation on."

"Again? You give up anything important yet?" She chuckles. There aren't any chairs in the little bay, since the cell itself is one of many lined along a long hallway. Most of them are empty. Visits are not encouraged. 

"No, no no, you've got the wrong impression. Jimmy's going to tell me a story."

James huffs. He can't cross his arms with the left one missing, but Natasha can tell that he badly wants to. "I will not."

"So then what happened to your arm?"

"I lost it." He's narrowing his eyes, like the right amount of glaring will somehow shut Barton up instead of fueling him.

"When?"

"Two days after the mall. You know this."

"No." Barton snaps his fingers. "Come on, man, keep up. Pay attention. _When?_ "

It doesn't take James a second time to understand what's really being asked, but he does take his time to chew over his answer. "World War Two."

Natasha barks out a laugh. She doesn't know if it's the truth. At this point, she doesn't care — everything she _really_ knows about James couldn't fit in a thimble, and Clint Barton swaggers in in his hideous, too-big pants, and that's apparently all James needs to tear off his shirt and spend four days hovering around him, mad as a wet cat. 

Barton isn't wearing the pants now, of course — they were taken for evidence and he was given plain teal scrubs, so really he just looks like a criminal veterinarian. 

"Oh-kay." Barton scratches his chin where a thin layer of blond fuzz has started to grow in. "So, what, you just went out and found yourself a new one?"

James sighs. 

Natasha pats him gently on the shoulder, trying hard not to laugh too much because while Barton is charismatic and entertaining, at the end of the day his fate is still in the air. "I'll leave you two to it."

"You should go find Virginia." Snipes James. 

It's meant to sting. It does, but that's something he doesn't need to know. 

Pepper's been missing in action since they jumped back to Solstice — not missing entirely, but Natasha hasn't seen her at all outside of briefings, and within them she doesn't think they've spoken three words directly to each other. It feels like a cold shoulder, but Natasha doesn't know what she's done except fail the intended mission. 

Maybe that's it? Pepper _is_ the commanding officer of their team, so bureaucratically speaking she stands to lose the most from failed mission objectives. But she couldn't have been entirely reassigned, because then Natasha would know about it. Right?

Strangely enough, Barton perks up at the mention of her name. "Pepper Potts? Haven't seen her down here yet."

"You won't." James growls. He could be bluffing, or he could know some truth that Natasha doesn't. 

"That can change. Take me to your leader, Robocop! Or, y'know, take your supervisor or whatever down here. To me. I need the company."

Natasha decides to leave then, before she gets drawn back into the banter and wastes too much more of her time. As she reaches the elevator, something in the back of her mind wants to follow James' suggestion to find her. She wants to know why Pepper's avoiding her, or if _not_ her, what she's avoiding at all. 

After that resolution, the next question becomes where to find her. It's a safe assumption that she must have an apartment or other kind of living arrangement in headquarters, but Natasha knows so little about the actual layout of the buildings and the connection between them that finding one person seems daunting. Her best chance of happening upon Pepper might just be combing through the residences from the bottom up. 

It's not like she's got anything but time now that she's on the bench. 

It takes her three floors to find a room with an occupant willing to answer the door. The guy on the other side is either coming back from or heading out to the athletics facility — he's in compression shorts, with no shirt and a towel slung around his neck. Natasha sighs, pointedly _not_ in admiration, but the agent soaks up what he must think is positive attention. 

"Haven't seen you around." His voice is rough, rougher than James', and he lifts an arm much higher than necessary to lean against the doorframe. 

"I'm looking for someone." She says emotionlessly. 

He raises an eyebrow, but luckily stops short of gesturing to himself. The implication behind his expression is enough. 

"Special Agent Virginia Potts."

" _Oh_ , you must be Romanoff." The guy chuckles, "You guys really made a mess of command, bringing in that S.H.I.E.L.D. agent."

"Don't think I've had the pleasure."

"Rumlow." He offers a big, meaty hand. She doesn't shake it. "Special Agent, targeted strike and assault. Usually keeps us busy, but they've been axing every non-essential mission for days."

Natasha isn't in the mood for conversation, not when she has a very different mission. "Any idea where S.A. Potts might be?"

Meathead shrugs. "So what's the deal, you've just been knocking on doors looking for her?"

He doesn't know, but he wants to keep her here. She doesn't want to stick around long enough to know the reason. "See you around, Rumlow."

Surprisingly, he gets the hint and gives her a mock salute. "Hope to."

She turns on her heel and is halfway down the hall before she hears the door click closed. 

There was only one piece of useful information in that entire, painful conversation: Rumlow is also a ranked Special Agent. If Natasha was on command, it would make sense to group agents of similar rank together — keeping each tier separate from each other helps to enforce the hierarchy. 

She must be close. 

Natasha optimizes her search. Treading as quietly as she can, she listens at each set of doors for details about their occupants. Most of them seem empty — which is logical, as it's the middle of the day when most of the company is likely training, reporting, or otherwise actually doing their jobs. Since Natasha doesn't actually have a job to do at the moment, being in between hours-long, grinding briefing meetings, she's hoping that Pepper is in a similar situation. 

Hope. That's a strange word to use without thinking, somewhere between emotion and fantasy. 

Seven doors down from Rumlow's, across the hall, she hears someone moving inside. It would be easier to get some kind of labeling, placards outside the doors like the office levels, but with employees like Special Agent Rumlow it's understandable why that was never implemented. Privacy from the company is ridiculous — but somehow privacy from each other is strictly enforced. 

Natasha takes her chance and knocks on the door. 

Pepper answers, more disheveled than she's ever seen her — but dishelved in a casual way, in a genuine way, dressed like someone would to clean the house or do their laundry because there's no performative need in getting those things accomplished. Her strawberry-blonde hair is falling a little out of the bun on the back of her head. 

"Hey" is the only thing Natasha can manage, as every other sentiment flies out the window. 

"Agent — Agent Romanoff." Pepper sounds surprised, stilted. It takes Natasha a moment to catch up from the formality. Her heart beats loud in her chest. 

"Have a second?"

"Oh, of course, yes." Pepper takes a step back and swings the door open. "Come in."

Her quarters are not all that different from Natasha's — very practical, very simple, very cold. There are no trinkets or personal touches anywhere. While Natasha doesn't know if she'd be more surprised if there were, the dispassionate grey rooms seem unfit, unsuitable for someone like Pepper. The front door is closed behind them.

"Sorry it's such a mess." Before Natasha can look, Pepper also shuts the door to what Natasha assumes to be the bedroom. "I'm trying to take advantage of this break."

A _break_ , she calls it — not a punishment, like it's an in-house vacation they've only been given out of the kindness of Solstice command's stone heart, and not something they've earned or deserved. 

"Yeah." Natasha takes another few seconds to gather herself. In truth, she hadn't thought through this far — Pepper had been so successful in avoiding her, it didn't even occur to her what she'd do next. "Hey, I have a question for you."

"Sure." She doesn't look sure. She looks defensive, almost, apprehensive of what Natasha could possibly ask, arms crossed, standing a professional distance away. 

"How do you and Barton know each other? Of each other?" The question is out before she can take it back, before she can decide if this is really the conversation that she wants to have right now. 

"We've met before." Pepper says simply, an answer and a non-answer at the same time. Natasha could pry, she thinks, but she wants to change the subject, wants to ask something else but she doesn't know how to string the words together. "He's still a talker, I take it?"

"He's keeping James occupied."

"Oh, I'm sure he is."

They fall into silence. It's odd for them, it doesn't fit, not when Natasha remembers talking about pants in the elevator after 1973, or the morning before 2004 when Pepper took a breakfast sandwich from the mess and handed it to Natasha on the way out the door. She'd said that she was vegetarian — so Natasha should eat it, otherwise it'd just go to waste. It hasn't been just the two of them often, but when it has, it's never been this quiet.

Pepper takes a long, deep breath. "I have something else to tell you."

Her voice has the same tone it did when she told Natasha about the wipes. 

"If you keep confessing things to me after missions, soon you'll have no secrets left." Natasha offers a small smile, hoping to see it returned.

It is, just barely. "One day, I hope. It's about — it's you and me, actually. I haven't been entirely honest, and I feel horrible about it."

Natasha's breath catches in her throat. Her mouth is clamped tightly shut, and she's biting the inside of her lip to keep from saying anything. She wants to know — she doesn't want to know — that need for knowledge spreads inside of her and sends her heart rate soaring. The truth is better than any alternative, so she thinks, but she decides to withhold final judgement until she hears this new truth. 

"You remember, after 1973, and I told you about the wipes?" Pepper isn't looking at her. Well, she is, but there's no eye contact, just a sort of blank stare in Natasha's general direction like she's running the words in her head before she says them. "You asked me if we'd had that conversation before."

She remembers. It was only a couple days ago, after all. 

"Well. Your second wipe was … rough. I didn't know you before then, but you were assigned to me until you got your bearings back. Our first mission was in 1967, California, nothing crazy, just observe and report on some persons of interest. Long story short, we were sussed out as spies, got into a fight, the pen — it broke, our watches were confiscated, but we managed to escape." There's a fond smile on Pepper's face now. Natasha's heart pangs like it remembers even though she knows she doesn't. "We spent three months going up the Pacific coast until we could get a message back to Solstice. It was beautiful. But it was mission fail, they wanted to wipe us both on return."

"But they didn't." It can't have happened, otherwise no one would be able to tell the story. 

"They did." Pepper nods. She steps into her little kitchenette and digs through the bottom cabinet. Pots and pans rattle softly until Pepper's in it almost up to her waist before something unsticks and she pulls out a large orange envelope, well-worn like it's been opened and closed many times. Inside it is a black leather-bound folio about the size of a legal pad. She pulls a photo out of the front pocket and hands it to Natasha. 

It's _them_. She can't breathe. They're standing in front of a little white car with no top, dressed in short shorts and sandals and bikini tops and macremė. The ocean spreads out behind them. Natasha has her arm around Pepper's waist, face frozen in a laughter, while Pepper's arm is draped over her shoulders as she beams at the camera. They don't like like mission agents. They look like — 

"How did you get this?" Natasha says softly. She can't stop staring at the photo. They looked so happy, free, all the time in the world to make their own. 

" … A friend gave it to me. After she realized I didn't remember. Nat, we knew everything they would do to us, we wrote it down and hid it for her to find. We remembered, in our own way."

She takes a deep breath. Her hands are shaking, only slightly, but enough to make the photo waver. Solstice thinks they can own truth, shape it the way they want to, erase the evidence — but it's right here, in Natasha's hands. Proof. Truth. 

"I don't blame you for not telling me."

"I didn't want to pressure you. It's hard enough, getting drilled and initiated again after a wipe, you shouldn't have to live up to my expectations." Pepper hugs the folio close to her, and her smile is a little watery. "It's history now, anyway."

Natasha looks at the back of the photo. San Francisco, California, July 1967. Pepper's right — the date's long past. Technically though, they have the means to go back, and for a moment Natasha's imagination gets away from her. She thinks of breaking into the jump room, throwing the watch and the pen into the ocean. They could save up to buy a car together and live on the road — Solstice wouldn't ever find them, not with all the time-travelers in the world. Looking up at Pepper, Natasha realizes she's got tears in her eyes too. "Doesn't have to be over."

Pepper's smile breaks and she wipes under her eye with a finger. It might've been exactly the wrong thing to say, there's a sick feeling in Natasha's stomach that this was all for the sake of transparency, for the sake of truth, rather than anything emotional. They've both been wiped since then, more than once in Natasha's case. They're different people. 

Natasha hands the photo back over and watches Pepper tuck it carefully back into the front of the folio. On the cover, there's an embossed, stylized eagle. 

"Pepper Potts, you mind if I kissed you?"

Pepper laughs, and it's shaky, but it makes Natasha smile. "Yes, Natasha Romanoff, I would like that very much."

She sets down the folio and crosses the kitchen floor. They meet gently, almost hesitantly, but the kiss itself is familiar and new all at once. They fit together like old puzzle pieces — once lost, but then found, dusted off to find their rightful place again. 

Natasha's hands are on Pepper's sides, even as she gently pulls away. Pepper presses their foreheads together. "I'm glad you knocked on my door."

"Me too."

The silence drops over them again, but this time they're in it together. They don't need to rely on words. Time passes, but they don't know how much, they don't care — Natasha had forgotten what it's like to hold someone, to have someone hold her, and she takes her time getting to know the feeling again. She kisses Pepper again, smiling at the way she smiles when she's kissed. 

"So who's your friend?" Natasha says finally. Softly, almost a whisper, daring to break the trance. "I only know about six people, and I'd like to know who to thank."

"It's — ah." Pepper stops herself, pulling a little away but not enough to let go. "I've got one more confession."

"Just one more?" She laughs. Pepper fights a smile. "I don't think you can top the last one."

"Well, I'm S.H.I.E.L.D. A double agent."

Natasha chuckles lowly. "Oh, so I'm fraternizing with the enemy now?"

"To be completely fair, so am I." Pepper nods to the folio on the counter. "I'm an informant. Sharon's my contact."

"That's why you didn't catch up in 2004." She muses. "I just thought you were slow."

"2004 was always going to end up the way it did. Solstice does a job in December of this year, kills the father of the actual inventor of the arc reactor, the son goes into a depressive rage, so the mall model is designed by Hammer Industries instead of Stark."

"And S.H.I.E.L.D. taking the core . . ."

"Justin Hammer didn't know what he was doing. The job was rushed, the reactor would've exploded two days later and fried everything in a five-mile radius. S.H.I.E.L.D was saving lives."

"And 1973?"

"The project files were destroyed anyway later that year. Well, most of them — some mysteriously come to light when the project starts to get declassified. Solstice just has pieces."

"You changed the list."

"It's mind control, Natasha, of course I changed the list."

"So Barton really does know you. You're not worried he's going to tell?"

"He's smarter than he looks. I was going to break him out, but something else's come up. Something big."

Pepper is serious now. She's still got her hands on Natasha's shoulders, but she's gripping tighter than before. Natasha watches her glance to the closed bedroom door.

"You're breaking cover?" And leaving. If Natasha hadn't found her, she doesn't know if she would have ever found out.

"I have to." She says. "Sharon said something's gone wrong in the early 20th century. Some kind of artifact surfaced that isn't supposed to be there, but supposedly it reads close to what both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Solstice use for the jumps."

"Then we'll both go."

"What?" Pepper looks shocked, like she couldn't have possibly anticipated this. "I can't let you."

"Too bad." Solstice has nothing she wants anymore — if it's going to stand between Natasha and Pepper, between Natasha and truth, and somewhere out there, there's a better way. A better way, saving lives, intercepting disasters and dangerous historical mistakes. "When are we leaving?"

Pepper doesn't answer right away. She looks frustrated at first, her forehead creasing. Natasha can practically see the gears working in her head, trying to scramble for a reason against them both going. Slowly, her expression smooths the mild annoyance. "Fine. But pack light, we're making a pit stop."


	6. Swing What You Got

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One last mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/track/0wAGDBXag9kPCksIKWXIFH?si=4g6j3M8GSIePrVkEk4pi7g) is the mood song for Chapter 6: Swing What You Got. ]
> 
> [ There's another fight scene in this chapter. Moderate injury to a character that will most definitely be okay. If you'd like, please play [this tune](https://open.spotify.com/track/4imhRytdksV0ZoLaaT1086?si=p6l5y5LwSOS0DGiznd8o1Q) at the following line:
> 
> Natasha nods, understanding exactly what he means. On the nearest table there are small fruit pastries — and while she could be convinced to be hungry, she doesn't trust the food enough to eat it. ]

When Pepper says 'pit stop', Natasha thinks that she means somewhere in headquarters that she's never been before — it's not until Pepper stops them at Prep and pounds on the door that she realizes that one, she's made a misinformed assumption, and two, that by 'pit stop', Pepper meant a historical detour. 

Prep is obviously not expecting them. Some wiry kid, probably an intern — Natasha's stomach drops at the thought of Solstice having _interns_ — answers the door, clearly confused but obviously trained well enough not to ask his questions out loud. 

Between them, they have one small bag containing: one uniform each, with the patches ripped off both for symbolism and for personal satisfaction; Pepper's S.H.I.E.L.D. folio, including the 1968 photo and her notes since; and one return-to-base flash pen. It's not Pepper's — technically, it's the one issued to Jasper Sitwell, who as it turns out is not even cleared for field duty. Natasha swapped it with Pepper's when they passed by his empty office. The switch isn't foolproof, but it will at least hopefully throw any investigation off the scent.

"What are you doing standing around, Agent, we've got a jump in twenty minutes!" Pepper is all business, scowling but not raising her voice. Natasha wonders where she falls in the rankings at S.H.I.E.L.D. 

"I-I, sorry, I didn't get any notification? What's the, uh, where are you— going?" The kid is almost immediately in a panic. "Is it — what details can you give me?"

"Undercover, formalwear, 1928." Pepper barks. "I refuse to believe no one notified you."

"Okay, _okay_ , okay okay okay." He full sprints to a large wall at the end of the room with built-in bookshelves. Each binder is carefully labelled with the year, the six months the binder covers, and a category, like 'Men's', 'Cosmetics', or 'Accessories'. It looks to be quite a library overall, but incomplete — maybe the most commonly-visited eras are held here, and the gaps that don't require as much interference are stored offsite. There are six binders stacked in his arms on the way back over. "Okay. Twenty minutes? Let's see what we can do."

For a rush job, the kid doesn't seem to do bad at all. While he's fretting over materials, Natasha takes it upon herself to cut her hair to just above her chin and curl it like one of the reference pictutres. It doesn't turn out half bad. Pepper is put in a floor-length gown of lavender silk — Natasha's is similar, but a very dark blue. 

"We match." Pepper muses with half a smile as the kid tries desperately to curl her hair under and pin it in place without cutting it. 

Natasha smiles into the mirror as she puts her lipstick on. With Prep's hands trembling as much as they are, she's not confident in his ability to be precise. 

The jump room presents a different problem — James had always opened it before, with his left hand. It doesn't budge for Natasha or for Pepper. Maglocked, maybe. 

"Shit," Pepper breathes. Natasha doesn't think she's ever heard her swear before. "Alright, I've got an emergency override code, but as soon as I use it they're going to know what's happening."

Natasha nods. "What about the watches? They won't be programmed."

"In the bag. Sharon gave me coordinates."

Digging out the folio, Natasha flips to the last page — and sure enough, tucked inside are four long strings of numbers. "Can't they track us?"

"Probably." Pepper shrugs. "We're going to have to hope no one's watching the scanners. Ready?"

"Guess so."

They share a soft smile. Pepper opens a panel under the hand scanner, pulls out a keyboard, and enters a 10-digit code. Her fingers hover over the enter key. She takes a deep breath, and hits it. 

Alarms erupt all around them — two long klaxon pulses, and a robotic male voice informs them: _Emergency jump initiated. Emergency jump initiated_. 

The mammoth door slides open slowly, slowly, _slowly_ until Natasha can squeeze through and dash to the watch case. She's got the slip of paper in her other hand, mouthing her way through the coordinates.

Pepper is suddenly beside her, and she hands over the first watch. 

Margaret Carter's voice rings out on the P.A. system. "Special Agent Virginia Potts, report to my office immediately."

"Like hell, Peggy." Pepper mutters to herself. It makes Natasha laugh, once, before she finishes her own coordinates. 

"Quick, double check." Natasha leans up close against her, wrists together, reading through each digit as fast as she can. 

"Special Agent Potts, _now_." Carter is furious — the PA is ringing high-pitched feedback. Several sets of footsteps pound down the hallway outside, rushing closer. 

"Come on!" Natasha grabs Pepper's wrist and takes her to the pillar in the middle of the room — even the glowing green light seems angry, frothing light and dark, whirling faster and faster until Natasha wrenches the case up and hits the button —

  
  
**> T I M E I S O N O U R S I D E <**

They land in another hallway. 'Land' being a very subjective word for the sensation of — of suddenly being aware again, without noticing you'd ever stopped. 

Natasha takes a moment to catch her breath. Pepper is right beside her, cheeks red from the excitement. Both of them lean in to steal a kiss at the exact same time. 

"We made it." Natasha smiles. 

"Hopefully that's the hard part down." Her lavender dress swishes softly as she leads them both out of the corner they'd appeared in. It's large, red patterned carpet, dark wood cladding the lower part of the walls, and lavishly decorated. Natasha guesses it must be a private home. 

"Tell me something—"

"It better be a good question." Pepper chides.

"How do you have an override code?"

"They give it to you when you make Special Agent. Supposedly it opens everything, but with how secretive they are I really wasn't sure it would work."

"You … weren't sure?"

"I mean, they call it the Lifeboat Protocol. Abandon ship, that sort of thing. If Solstice was overrun that's the way I would try to escape."

"I can't believe you bet our lives on a promotional code." Natasha laughs. Not exactly their lives, maybe, but their memories. She still feels safe though, having that kind of thing in Pepper's hands, because she knows they'll always find each other again somehow. "You know, sometime, you're going to have to tell me more about S.H.I.E.L.D."

"How about just a little at a time, to keep you interested?" She's never going to get tired of Pepper's laugh. "Like the fact it was started by Peggy — well, Margaret Carter."

Natasha chuckles to herself. "How about something true?"

"It _is_ true." Pepper says, eyes gleaming. "Well, she hasn't done it yet, but in her future, there's an early Cold War job big enough for her to go out on field duty. She jumps to 1947 and falls in love with a waitress. So she stays behind and founds S.H.I.E.L.D."

"What?" It's hard to imagine. Someone that sharp, that aloof, forming an organization specifically designed to unwork something like Solstice. 

"It's true, I swear! Angie's still alive, as far as I know. I think she'd really like you."

"All because of a crush?"

"Well," Pepper stops walking for a second, "You jumped for me, didn't you? I didn't even ask. So if you don't believe me, that makes you a hypocrite."

"I'm only skeptical of Carter's ability to feel," Natasha says. She wants badly to kiss Pepper again, to see her smile again, but her lipstick is vintage so it hasn't dried and she's not sure if Pepper would even welcome that right now. "But I … I want to have what we had in that picture."

Pepper's voice is very soft. "Me too."

"If we keep getting wiped, we'll never get there."

That makes the corner of Pepper's mouth tick up like she's fighting a smile. Natasha offers her hand, and when Pepper takes it and laces their fingers together, she smiles too. 

They turn a corner and are almost immediately stopped by a man in a three-piece suit with a high tab collar. He tilts his head up specifically to look down his nose at them, even though Natasha's almost certain that Pepper is actually taller. 

"I'm sorry, this area of the house is closed to guests."

Pepper goes from a kind, smart smile into a girly, half-drunk giggle almost instantly. "Sorry, we just got lost!"

"It's just so beautiful in here," Natasha adds. She admires the ceiling for good measure — copper colored tiles stamped with floral patterns. 

The man doesn't look amused, but he does look convinced. "The ballroom is down the hall on your left. Please do not deviate this far again."

"Understood, thank you!" 

A _ballroom_. Roaring twenties, indeed. 

The place is huge, but with such pointed directions they find it easily. It looks like a palace, thirty foot ceilings, a large, open floor skirted with tables of fruit, pastries, and bowls of punch. At the end of the room, across the mass of what Natasha estimates is about three hundred people, is a grand staircase of smooth, dark wood, with a spacious landing about halfway up before it splits into two separate staircases. There are five chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the large one in the center Natasha thinks might be about the size of a car, and four smaller duplicates nearer the four corners of the room. 

Right now, on the landing of the staircase, a live band is playing. It looks like half an orchestra, a dozen or more musicians with no music stands in front of them, all in tuxedos with bow ties and long coattails. 

"There," Pepper says, nodding her head to couple dancing on the floor about twenty-five feet away from them. It's a large blond man in a dark blue striped suit and a woman in a knee-length dress with a silver sequined headband. 

Natasha doesn't recognize her with her hair up like that, or the knee-length, flapper-style dress she's wearing, but she supposes that must be Sharon. The gentleman remains a mystery. 

By the time they cross the floor to them, the song ends. Sharon's date looks relieved. 

Pepper taps him on the shoulder. "Can I cut in?"

"Oh," he says, immediately stepping aside to make room, "You must be —"

Sharon puts an arm out in front of him as soon as she lays eyes on Natasha. Without a word, she looks to Pepper for an explanation. 

"I know, but she remembers — not exactly, but I told her about California." Pepper reaches behind her to grasp for Natasha's hand. 

"I'm here to help." Natasha adds. The big blond looks between them all, clearly trying to pick up on the dynamics in play without having to be looped in.

"If you double-cross us," Sharon says lowly, taking a step forward, "I'm dumping you on Solstice's doorstep and throwing away the key."

"Whoa, Sharon, hey," the guy says. He puts up his hands, but Natasha doesn't honestly believe he could stop her — she's seen Sharon go toe-to-toe with James. She's not to be underestimated. 

As nice as it would have been to be accepted immediately into the fold, Natasha's inner realist was well-prepared for this. It's the same game, but a different brand — Solstice tested her, and now S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to too. The life they live demands it. 

For a moment, she wonders if she's chosen the right side. Pepper is watching her closely but not speaking up. It's on her again to make a choice, but this time she feels an alternative. She thinks that Pepper might let her walk away, if she decided it wasn't worth it. But it is.

"I understand." Natasha nods. "Just tell me what you need me to do."

Sharon offers her hand and they shake on it. It's a tentative peace — one Natasha will gladly take over open hostility. As a sign of good intentions, she offers her full name. "Natasha Romanoff."

"Sharon Carter."

She tries to school her face in time, but Sharon must notice, because her expression turns a little harsh. 

"Her granddaughter." Pepper explains. 

The math is whirling in Natasha's head. First chance she gets, she's sitting down with a pen and paper to get the facts straight. 

"This is Captain Rogers." Sharon continues, gesturing to her date. "In case things get rough."

"Are we expecting things to get rough?" asks Pepper. She offers a hand to Rogers. "Pepper Potts."

"That's a nice name." He says with a smile. 

"Hopefully not, unless you had to use your emergency code—"

"Which I did."

"—so then yes, probably trouble. If we're lucky, they'll wait until after we've secured the artifact."

"Let's hope the timing works out. What are we looking for?"

Natasha is making herself useful by scanning the room while Pepper and Sharon catch each other up. The map in her mind's eye is incomplete, but usable. Her and Pepper's brief escapade through the lower floor of the house gave her a good idea of how the main arteries of the building should be laid out — unless the primary architecture of the house is atypical, which it might be for a mansion this size. Trouble's not going to do very well here in the ballroom, not if it looks anything like the last time S.H.I.E.L.D. and Solstice clashed. 

Also, she and Pepper are both in heels. Sharon seems more prepared in her ballet-style flats. 

Assuming Sharon can still summon her own jump at any time with limited warning, an exit strategy shouldn't be much of an issue unless they get separated. It would be helpful if Captain Rogers had that authority as well, but Natasha doesn't want to count on maybes. 

The defining factor in the geography is the artifact itself. What it looks like, its size, its security measures. Without knowing anything about it, it's impossible to predict how this mission might end.

"We don't know much." Sharon admits. She's talking quietly, just above a whisper, but soft enough for her voice to be lost in the crowd outside of the four of them. "The house belongs to Stephen Strange, a physician and hobby archaeologist. Supposedly this artifact is to blame for several radio anomalies since it was dug up, but no pictures of it have been published. Scientists in the area are reporting the ability to pick up over incredible distances — one even claims he's received several cyphers from outer space. That should be impossible for the time."

Rogers jumps in, mission-ready. "Time-local reconnaissance says the wavelength and energy signatures are close to the Delorean."

Before Natasha has a chance to ask, Sharon answers, "It's what we call the device capable of travel through linear time. Solstice and S.H.I.E.L.D. have the same one — Rambeau leads the mission to capture it in 1995."

That further explains the year Solstice has decided to make its home — and adds fuel to the fire regarding their conflict of interest. Both of them, Solstice and S.H.I.E.L.D, are locked in an arms race trying to make the same technology proprietary for their own reasons.

"As far as we can tell, the Delorean is just a very special glowing green rock." Pepper says matter-of-factly.

Sharon chuckles. "Bruce says he's working on it."

"So what _is_ it," Natasha asks. "We're looking for another glowing green rock?"

"Maybe it won't be green," shrugs Rogers.

"It's probably on display in one of the galleries. Intelligence says they're all upstairs." All of them know not to glance up the staircase, but all of them want to. Sharon continues, looking between each of them. "Pepper, you're with me. We'll start in opposite corners upstairs, comb to the middle. Rogers, Romanoff, you're on lookout duty."

"Understood." Rogers nods. 

Natasha glances at Pepper. She's not about to argue, not when she's been very clearly delegated to a task least likely to compromise the mission. But, and she would never admit this out loud, it does feel a little like being seated at the kids' table — from what little she's seen, Rogers doesn't seem like much of a dancer either, so she even might end up babysitting. 

"Keep it safe," Pepper says softly, handing over their bag. Natasha knows she's talking about the photo and the promise it keeps. She nods. 

Sharon and Pepper don't vanish instantly, but they each wade into the crowd, taking their time to slowly disappear. Natasha doesn't watch them go no matter how much she wants to — her own personal reassurance is not worth compromising them over. 

The band starts up again. Rogers looks supremely uncomfortable with it. 

"We don't have to dance, Captain." She says, amused. 

"I'd rather not." He's already on his way off the floor. "Not my forte. And you can call me Steve, I don't think I'm technically a Captain anymore."

They find their way to the edge, in a gap between buffet tables, where other couples are seated in little cafe chairs and making conversation. 

"What do you mean?" She asks. 

Rogers — Steve, a strangely fitting name for the way he shifts between casual and professional, takes his time in answering. "It's … It's a long story. Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure what order to tell it in."

Natasha nods, understanding exactly what he means. On the nearest table there are small fruit pastries — and while she could be convinced to be hungry, she doesn't trust the food enough to eat it. 

There's a loud drum in the music all of a sudden — it's loud, sort of cacophonous, like a timpani out of time. It roils like thunder, and suddenly an angry green cloud appears above the band. 

"Oh, _shit_ ," says Steve, hurrying back to the floor. 

Natasha tosses her bag aside and follows — by the time the crowd has noticed, three dark figures have fallen about three feet onto the landing. Wood crunches under their heavy boots. Sickly green smoke billows around them just a moment, curling and dissipating as the entire hall is frozen in shock. 

They're all in tac gear, bottom halves of their faces covered in black fabric. One has a pair of pistols and another has a pair of batons crackling with electricity. The middle one has an assault rifle — he sweeps it over the crowd, firing relentlessly. The walls splinter, people scream and start to rush the back of the room. Natasha takes the cover of chaos to slip out of her shoes and tie her skirt in a loose knot around her knees. Sharon had the right idea with the flapper skirt. 

To her right, Steve swipes a buffet plate off a nearby table, dumps the food, and hurls it at the guy nearest to him. It rushes through the air like a frisbee and strikes the guy right in the chest — but he's armored, and only knocked back a few steps. 

Steve's got the right idea with the buffet plates. Natasha starts to think he knows what he's doing until he charges _right up the stairs_ at the guy closest to him. The guy looks as shocked as Natasha feels, but there's no time to watch what happens after.

She's the only one left on the floor, and Batons is taking his sweet time coming towards her. 

"Hey, Romanoff," Batons says, pulling down his face mask and of _course_ it's Rumlow. Why wouldn't it be. "Long time, no see."

"Wish it was longer." Special Agent, targeted strikes and assault, he'd said — Natasha thinks it makes him good, offensively. It also might make him predictable. 

He swings at her, left, "Oh, aren't you—," right, "— a _sweetheart_." Then the left again. 

She doesn't need to keep up the banter, instead stepping back, out of his reach, so he has to come to her. He does. 

What an idiot. 

Right-left-right this time. Natasha ducks and swerves the strikes. It looks like his gloves are padded heavily against any possibility of shock. His gear doesn't seem to be made of the same stuff. 

Natasha strikes back — small, just a jab really, testing her range. Rumlow laughs. 

When he comes at her with the left, a large, swinging blow across his body, she's ready. Natasha parries it, grabbing a hold of his arm and dodging the wild swing his makes with his right. 

He's got no headgear on. She's willing to bet her forehead is stronger than his nose. 

The sharp _crack_ and the curse that follows are so, so satisfying. He does drop the batons, which is what she was going for, but they're strapped to his gloves somehow. 

As he staggers and tries to get his grips back, she strikes him clean across the jaw the old-fashioned way and retreats back a step, guard up.

She's got her back to the stairs now — too risky, she decides, and ducks under Rumlow's angry swipe so they switch places. 

"You're really starting to piss me off, Romanoff," he snarls.

To her left, Steve seems to be holding his own against the other two, until the middle one grips his own rifle by the barrel and swings it like a very expensive club. 

No time to worry. Rumlow is coming at her again, top-heavy, so she waits. Times it right. Sidesteps, grabs his wrist above the glove and twists his arm behind his back. She frees the baton and brings it to bear right against his shoulder blades. 

The smell of it singeing his tac armor is disgusting, but he growls like an animal, trying to stop the writhing he can't control. Natasha drops his arm, both hands on the baton grip, pressing it against his back until he slides to his knees and falls forward. She doesn't wait for him to get up. 

"Romanoff!" 

Steve, across the landing — the click of a safety, a pistol sailing in the air towards her. She can't say she catches it carefully. She doesn't know if she's ever caught a gun before, but as soon as it's in her hand, she remembers how to use it. 

With her baton crackling, she's caught the attention of the middle agent, the one who no longer has an assault rifle .

Natasha doesn't want to wait around to see what he does. She flicks the safety off and aims for his kneecaps —

She doesn't fire, she doesn't get a chance because he's already _there_ , he's _fast_ , his hand clamped over the barrel. Natasha pulls the trigger anyway. 

He pulls away a smoking metal palm, curls it into a fist, and drives it upward into her middle. 

Natasha chokes, all the air forced out of her lungs as he knocks her off her feet and flat onto her back — she loses her grip on both the baton and the gun. 

" _James_ ," she coughs out. She's struggling to breathe, her pulse is pounding in her ears. 

James — she knows it's him, she can see his light eyes glittering over the mask — stands over her and unbuckles a knife sheath on his thigh. 

He doesn't remember you, her logic says. He's been wiped again. She knows it's true — there's no recognition in his face as he flips his grip on the knife. 

Almost silently, Steve races up behind him and cracks him in the back of the skull with the butt of his own rifle. James blinks, shakes off the strike. He turns quick, dropping low and slicing the outside of Steve's thigh, just above the knee. Steve hisses but doesn't drop — he swings again, this time to knock the knife out of James' hand. 

Natasha rolls back, up to her feet. The third guy, the one Steve engaged first, is crumpled on the stairs leading up. She hopes he's unconscious. 

Rumlow groans behind her. 

James drops the knife and Steve, relieved to see it go, drops his guard. He gets cracked across the cheek with a metal fist, but he's not driven back. 

"En garde then, asshole." Steve spits. 

James says nothing. They both charge at each other — at the last moment, Steve ducks low to catch James around the middle, sending them both tumbling down the big staircase. 

Natasha rounds on Rumlow again. Steve's going to have to take care of himself. 

Rumlow doesn't seem to be very with it. He's got himself to one knee, but it's taking him quite a while to get all the way to his feet. 

"Romanoff!" A voice from above, behind her. Sharon. "We've got it — holy _hell_ —"

"Nat!" Pepper's rushing behind her, faster than Natasha ever thought anyone could run in heels. She looks like Cinderella, hair still done up, skirts in her hands as she hurries down the stairs. Natasha doesn't think Pepper would like the comparison very much, but greets her with open arms anyways. 

"I'm okay."

" _Bucky?!_ " Steve pants, incredulous. On the dance floor, he and James are facing off again, scraped up but seemingly okay — James must've lost his face mask in the fall. 

"What the _hell_ is happening," mumbles Rumlow. He staggers to his feet, takes a few shaky steps, and sinks back to his knees. 

Pepper breaks away from Natasha to squat down in front of him. She grips his chin, hard, like he's some schoolkid who tried to skip class, not a grown man who just attempted murder. "Who ordered this?"

He giggles like a drunk man. "Not Carter, she wouldn't approve it."

She _snarls_ , vicious like Natasha's never seen her. "Then you tell Alex Pierce I'm coming for him." 

Sharon, a strange metal suitcase in her hand, picks one of the discarded handguns off the ground and whips him with the grip. Rumlow goes limp in Pepper's hand, and she tosses him to the side. 

Below them, Steve cries in pain. He's braced against James — with a knife buried in his shoulder up to the hilt. 

"Rogers!" Sharon drops the case, scoops up the baton closest to her, and hurries down the stairs. 

Before she can get there, Steve's wrestled James around with an arm pulled tight around his neck. James tries to wrench his off with his arm, once, twice — Steve drops them both back, landing flat on his back to wrap his leg and hold the metal arm in place. It's a rough sleeper hold. 

Natasha and Pepper follow Sharon down. Pepper cries out, "Don't kill him!"

"Don't _kill_ him?" Sharon scoffs, "He just tried to kill Steve!"

" _Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep_ ," Steve grits between his teeth. His face is scrunched in pain and concentration — the knife in his shoulder is weeping red blood.

Eventually, James' eyes roll back, and he stops fighting. 

Steve lets go and lays back, panting. He swallows and reaches a shaky hand for his shoulder. 

"Don't pull it out." Natasha unties the knot in her skirt and rips off the bottom foot or so to bunch up and press around the handle. Steve groans. "Not till we get you to a medical unit."

"Headquarters." Sharons confirms. To Pepper, she asks, "What do you want to do with them?"

Pepper looks back to the landing, to Rumlow and the third agent laying out on the staircase. 

"Think I broke a rib." Steve muses softly.

Of all things, Sharon laughs. "Is it a real fight if you didn't?"

"Nat and I can put our watches on them. Set the pen to a timer, send them back." Pepper says finally, already unclipping the watch from her wrist. 

"Then they'll come after us again." Natasha adds. 

"Then we'll — we'll kick their asses again," wheezes Steve, slowly working his way to sitting. James is still splayed out unconscious across his legs. "But we're taking him with us."

Sharon shakes her head. "Steve—"

"It's not an argument, Sharon. I owe him."

"Long story?" Natasha asks. Steve nods. 

Pepper reaches for Natasha's wrist and starts taking off her watch herself. "It's okay if you lost the bag."

"I threw it under one of the tables. We'll find it." She leans in to give her a kiss. Slowly, she Pepper can refuse if she wants to — but she doesn't. 

The ballroom is destroyed. No guests trickle back in, but Natasha's fairly certain that there's a couple of the braver attendees peeking in through the windows. 

Sending Rumlow and the other agent back to Solstice is tricky. They can set the Solstice watches to 'home', but without exposure from the pen they won't go anywhere — and no one is sure if the blast will catch anyone who sees it, or just anyone with a watch. 

"Because you didn't have a watch on in 1973," Natasha says to Pepper. 

"No, but I was the one holding the pen. And someone needs to hold it to press the button."

"What, this one here?" Sharon is examining the device in question. She gestures to the top where, under the cap, a small green button sits where the clicker would be. 

" _Don't_ press it." Pepper says seriously. 

They figure their best bet is a matter of timing: Sharon will call open a portal to S.H.I.E.L.D., and right as it closes, someone needs to throw the pen straight down so it bounces off its own button. 

It's ridiculous, but it's the best they've got. 

Steve, who thinks he's less injured than he is, offers to carry James — "Bucky", he insists — through the portal. The way he's swaying makes everyone think otherwise, but right after it opens he hauls James up over his good shoulder and fireman's carries him through. Sharon steps through after them. 

Pepper offers the pen to Natasha. "Your honors."

She stares at it for a moment, considering, but she takes it. "If I get stuck back there, you better come break Barton and I out."

"And if you don't, we can just leave Barton." Sharon says from the other side. Behind her, a group of techs open the metal briefcase and pull out — what Natasha supposes is a very special glowing rock, but this time blue instead of green. 

"Nobody's leaving anybody." Pepper says softly, leaning in for a soft, gentle kiss. 

Natasha closes her eyes and savors it before pulling away with a smile. Pepper gives her another, quick little kiss and steps through to S.H.I.E.L.D. She grips the pen tightly and follows. 

With a deep breath, she turns to face the gap in time. It's strange, looking at the ballroom through a window edged in green clouds, knowing she can walk through and be there, two places separated by distance and time but connected only by this. 

She aims the pen at an angle and counts to three. 

Natasha tosses it through like a javelin, a missle strike heading straight for the ground, and the portal closes. 

In front of her now is an older Black woman, hair cut short, in a dark blue uniform with the S.H.I.E.L.D. eagle logo. 

"Director Rambeau," Sharon breathes behind her. 

"Natasha Romanoff," says the Director with an amused smile. "I've heard a lot about you."

Natasha shakes her hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Here are some "end credits" tracks: [ONE](https://open.spotify.com/track/7vAwjvJs8YSlHcykJu7nc0) || [TWO](https://open.spotify.com/track/0o3Ki1kUWyoF2XVtDBRNqk) || [THREE](https://open.spotify.com/track/56Z6rhJgCZvFa89XIxEYDI)
> 
> And, as promised, [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7t6bbeTCofUYPWxc27Q9AS) is the entire playlist. Not all of the songs made it onto the official soundtrack, but they're still there to help build it out a little bit :)
> 
> If you enjoyed, please consider sharing on [tumblr](https://vextant.tumblr.com/post/185900092821/solstice-inc-art-kangofu-cb-words-vextant) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/vvextant/status/1144445842545401857) to help spread the Nat/Pepper love!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[ART] Solstice, Inc](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406038) by [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB)




End file.
